I saw The Vikings today, a Kirk Douglas movie made in 1958. It's V. Good, if rather campy.

Shittiest Plan Ever: "Let's throw axes at the drawbridge!"

Which brings me to..

Shittiest Drawbridge ever: "The next drawbridge is stronger, my lord."

.. and characters...

Eric: I am Long Lost Heir to the Throne of England. I wear no pants.

Father Godwin: I have been shoved into unconsciousness!
(God, what a wuss)

Einar: ODIN! ODDDINNN!!!!

Lady Morgana: I'll never fuck you, you evil damsel-abducting heathen Viking! Oh, wait, I'll go and fuck that other damsel-abducting evil heathen Viking now. Goodbye.

Aella: Yes. I randomly keep a pit full of live wolves.

I honestly don't know why Aella is like this background villain. None of the main characters like him, and he's supposed to be the generic "cruel upsurper king" type, but he never actually upsurps anyone, and we never see him or hear of him doing anything particularly cruel beyond reason.

1. He takes the throne quite legally without knowledge of, or, obviously, malice towards this 'long lost heir to the throne' figure.

2. He arrests a traitor and tries to have him assassinated. Yes, the man is actually guilty.

3. He orders Ragnar tossed into a wolf pit. This being the Viking chief who murdered the former king (his cousin) and raped the queen.

4. He wants to toss Eric into the wolf pit for cutting the ropes around the Viking chief's hands and giving him a sword. C'mon! A sword!! But Morgana begs clemency and he cuts off Eric's hand instead.

Well.. okay. The whole wolf pit thing is rather incriminating. ... okay.. and the whole "I promised you clemency but now I'm going to kill you" thing. But otherwise!! I bet he's a kind and gentle man!! Poor Aella. He's so abused.

I think the impression we as the viewers are supposed to get is that he's an opportunist who doesn't have the moral scruples against killing inconvenient people, an impression we get not so much by his actions but by his general personality and other characters' impressions of him. (Such as the queen not liking him and hiding her son from him, the princess not liking him, so forth.) But never once in the movie does he do anything unambiguously evil that couldn't be explained quite logically from his point of view without even the need to resort to an irrational villainy rant. The Viking protagonists do more evil things, but they have 'hero' type personalities. It seems all a matter of perspective of who's a villain and who's not.

(The "vegetarian wolves" mentioned by the reviewer: actually... I think that they put the meat in so that the wolves would smell it and become hungry, for.. MAN-FLESH.. but wouldn't be able to eat it. After all, it's fairly pointless throwing a guy into a pit with non-hungry wolves. So it's not that they're vegetarian wolves and didn't eat the meat, but that the meat was intentionally pulled out before they could get to it.)

Is Einar a villain?? He's actually pretty likable, for being a scarred, monovision, axe-throwing wannabe rapist. IMHO, he's a lot worse than Aella but he's made out to be this.... if not hero.. this big protagonist character.

What about Ragnar? He's like the Jabba the Hutt of the Fjords who kills and rapes people.

BTW: Morgana (Janet Leigh) is pretty hot for a 50's chick.

Hurray for snow! The world is magical again! I made a snow angel, the first successful one I've made without ruining, in my life. The world looks like it's covered in a warm fleece blanket, and the snow sparkles like mica and crystalline dust flies in my face.

In unrelated news, I got a haircut.

All of them.

In more unrelated news, The Grand Flaming Marshmallow Balrog Contest.

My Diet Blog now has a commenting system. Yes, another blog for you to read and comment on. For some of you, I suspect it may be more interesting than my actual blog.

Janay, the girl in art, after days of being fairly silent, finally opened up when a boy came to sit at the table next to us (Shirley was absent and he took her seat.) Apparently this girl has:

1. Been pregnant multiple times and sneaked out of the house to get abortions ("It's just a pill. It doesn't hurt at all. It gross though.")

2.Taken drugs to avoid pain during the abortion.

3. Is engaged to a boyfriend of three years who is currently encarcerated.

4. Had sex with another guy while said boyfriend of three years is being encarcerated.

5. Challenged another girl to a fight and punched her in the face.

We live in two totally different worlds. What am I supposed to chat with her about? Movies? Music?

None of this is my business, except that she also wants me to draw part of her art project for her, which I politely declined to do, telling her she'd probably feel prouder of her own artwork.

I suppose she could be playing with my head, but assuming she's telling the truth. I didn't say this to her but I'll say it here: 1. Get pregnant once, it's a mistake. Do it multiple times, it's stupidity, and horrendously cruel stupidity in the cost of unborn babies. (I don't think abortion is the same as murder, but it is something rather horrific that shouldn't be done unless absolutely necessary. This.. is just caprice.) 3. Marrying a criminal is also stupidity.. I don't even understand this, because if you were stupid enough to be idealistically in love with him, why did you (4) cheat on him? Little Miss Negress, this does not reflect very well on your race. Now, I know that the logical thing to say here is that the actions of the individual reflect only on that individual and not an entire group which is arbitrarily decided by skin pigmentation in the first place. However, seeing as this is the only member of this certain race I actually come in contact with on a regular basis and therefore this member presents 100% of my contact with black people (maybe less if you count my contacts online, but that's silly), my inner racist, (who exists along with my inner bitch, my inner homophobe, my inner xenophobe, my inner imperialistic capitalistic pig, my inner communist, and my inner religious fundamentalist) is muttering about the downfall of western civilization and worse.

This also begs the question: How White/Fake Am I? I know I do live in a plastic bubble, which is rather pleasant, actually. I don't particularly dislike being a Twinkie but I dislike the label; as if I'm being two-faced or hypocritical about something. I don't see why I ought to owe any loyalties to The People's Republic Of China (*chingchongchingchong*) or some strange sense of bloodlines that crosses oceans but I don't want to feel as if I'm neglecting what my parents taught me.

Another interesting note: I had a dream once (not recently) that segregation was reinstated. I remember that the thing I was personally most upset about was being seperated from all my friends and being rather indignant about one thing: "What???!! How the hell am I colored??? Look! My skin is light!" This, in my dream, did not convince anybody. I don't think I gave a damn in the dream about black people in segregation, or even the fact that segregation was reinstated. Tres weird.

Went to Rockville Library this afternoon to pay my overdue fines (I swear, I give no money to charity but I end up giving tons to the Montgomery County libraries) and renew "Glory Season" by David Brin. V. Good so far- infinitely superior to Terry Goodkind. Don't know why I waste my time on him. I could renew online, but it's somehow more satisfying for me to see them stamp the new date in shiny black ink on that long white sticker in the back.

Also: Madrigals auditions are tomorrow. Do not think I will, because Frezzo said that most likely lunch bunchers only won't make it unless we'd had previous class experience or unless we were phenomenal sight readers. I'm very probably the worst aural sight reader in the class. I can only sing what I can hum, I can only sing on key if I can hear my own voice, even if it's the same note over and over again, something as simple as quarter eighth quarter eigth quarter eigth. And of course, I can't give myself a starting note. When I told Frezzo I could sight read, I meant with instruments. I know where to hit the keyboard on a piano when I see the note for 'A.' I don't quite understand how he took this to mean I could somehow sing.

I'm starting up my diet blog again because I'm on Atkins (have been for the last three days). Hurrah for me.

List of things I'm not allowed to eat:

Caffeine
Bread
Rice
Noodles
Fried stuff
Fruit
Dessert

Yep! It's no carbohydrates and no sugar!

List of things I can eat:

Vegetables
Meat
Dairy Products

Yay skippy. Don't try to sell me chocolate.

Mmmmm... Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in a hottub.

Anyway, now that's over with. (For my loyal readers I suppose it's yet to come. You must remember that what I post the earliest you read the latest and what I post the latest you read the earliest. So scroll down. )

I woke up at 6:40 in the morning from a dream that my mother and grandmother were screaming at me. Despite not sleeping well I was glad to be awake.

My oral went well, I think, at least for having gotten the Virginia Woolf passage on.. fishing for ideas, that extended metaphor. I was the first to go and Ms. Barret said it was a good way to start her day. However, I don't know if I actually did well, since Ms. Barret is on the whole a kind and encouraging personality independent of actual performance. When I left Alex had arrived and I arranged to have him give me a ride to Fatal Valentine since my parents would be leaving the house at 5 pm to go to a dinner party for New Year's. He agreed to pick me up at 7:30. I went to IHOP afterwards with my mom, where she told me that since they were leaving at 5 I'd have to make dinner by myself and I told her don't worry it's not like I'd starve. And later on to Best Buy where I bumped into Nick (B). He asked me if I heard about the space shuttle and I said, "It exploded?" as a joke kind of (I have come to expect the worst possible news of everything so that nothing surprises me, but on the downside it has me making rather tactless comments). I did not believe that it had honestly exploded. ("You lost a shuttle? Where did you last put it?") We listened to the news on a Best Buy radio. As it turned out, my ghastly initial intuition was correct. Nick bought a CD player.

I went home, watched the news, and stopped after the NASA press conference because there was really nothing that I felt like I had any right or need to know. An hour's worth of repetition of, "We're very saddened and are doing our best to investigate it" which was as much as any person could really be expected to do, besides wait for tomorrow. It seemed that to keep the tv on to watch people talking in low sad tones and look at endless parades of photographs would be needlessly sensationalistic.

I read some Rosencranz and Guildenstern and got annoyed because it was confusing, actually finding the lines taken directly from Hamlet to be more comprehensible. I read some Romeo and Juliet without footnotes and discovered that Shakespeare is indeed more understandable than Tom Stoppard, explanatory notes or no. I read the comics. They weren't funny, not even Prince Valiant. I took a nap, waking up intermittantly to my alarm clock buzzing. I saw the time as 5:44 and frantically smacked the alarm clock off, thinking I'd be waking my parents too early in the morning for them to drive me to school. It was actually late afternoon on Saturday.

I woke up at 7:40 in the evening to the doorbell ringing. It was Alex waiting with The Van and I spontaneously changed out of my pajamas, yelled at him that I was coming, combed my hair, stuffed $20 in my empty wallet and pocketed it, put my feet in my boots without socks, grabbed the house keys, and sprinted into the van. Alex told me that duh I wasn't supposed to get in on the driver's side. I jumped on shotgun and put on my socks. I had forgotten my cell phone at home. We rushed off to pick up Valex at Woodmont Park. We did, but not Silvia, because she "didn't ask." We got to RM at 8-ish and bought tickets and went in. It was a funny play for being a running gag wherein the actors did not enunciate, but nonetheless it was very exciting and hilarious and of course, interactive. I went around at intermission asking "romance writers" for their autographs and Malex went around hitting on the male leads. I ate some cake and that was my dinner. We went back in. We voted Martha the murderer. I heard last performance it was Flick.

Malex drove me home where there was a message on the answering machine from my mom from earlier in the evening wondering why the alarm clock hadn't woken me up and shouldn't I be awake eating dinner by now?

SNL was a rerun, but I watched it to avoid the news.

Obligatory Space Shuttle Columbia Post:

What a way to die. I wonder if it hurts to die, and how painful it must be being burned alive and ripped apart. I wonder if when people die they go to heaven instantaneously. I wonder what it must be like to die like a meteor, like a falling star, so brightly and so violently, but if it in the end would not be a way I would choose to go.

I think they will say later that the Year of the Ram was ushered in with smoke and flame and the explosion of fireworks.

Also: I am so sick of National Tragedies, but the ones I have are not anything like those of the previous generation, or the one before that. This 20th century is a string of national tragedies, stretching on into the 21st. As it were, I did not know anyone, and feel like letting those who will mourn mourn. Personal tragedies will remain deeply personal and perhaps the rather whorish title of National Tragedy and the media orgy that comes with it ought to be reserved for other things.

(/End Obligatory Space Shuttle Columbia Post)