of books, movies, and work

Recently, I spent too much money on scrapbooking supplies. So, while I'm scrapbooking, I watch my netflix movies. I just finished Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, both of which were awesome, and am getting La Vie en Rose for tomorrow. I still have Das Boot, but it's so long, I've been saving it.

I also just read The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri, and it was excellent. However, I was rather depressed and unhappy about the state of the world and life in general after reading it. So... I guess that's a point in its favor, that I was so invested in the characters I really had a an emotional reaction. But I doubt I'll be reading it for fun anytime again soon.

Lastly, I saw There Will Be Blood and In Bruges in the past few days - if you can see either of these, go for it. In Bruges is meant to be a dark comedy, but There Will Be Blood often crosses that line without even seeming to mean to. Both truly excellent movies.

And, yet again, I am working six days this week. So, it's good for my wallet, no so good for my sanity.

I need an iPod

I'm getting really bored at work. I check the news every few minutes. I answer email. I write on my blog. It's not as though there's not work. It's just that the work there is is rather mind-numbing and one needs these little mental breaks to keep from going stark raving mad. I think I might go make myself some hot apple cider shortly.

All of my colleagues either have an mp3 player or they smoke. I don't intend to take up smoking, so I guess I need an mp3 player. Maybe this will help with the need to make sure that my brain doesn't turn to a giant pile of applesauce inside my skull.

On another note, I watched Batman and Robin: The Movie last night, and it was hilarious. Very dry humor, absolutely obnoxious dialogue, and great tights. "Holy Polaris, Batman!" - very funny. It's very much in the 60's science/technology show mentality, though - I think Star Trek and Batman have more in common than I thought.

And now... for something completely different

I work a lot. This week, I've already hit forty hours, and I still have today and tomorrow to go. This is good, though, because I get paid overtime, which I like.

I have decided that, in honor of not having any time to relax anymore, I would have a hat show-and-tell week! I don't actually have more than five hats, so I figured that's just right. So, next week, for each day of the week, I will post a picture of one of my hats while on my head.

Tonight, I get off a little early because I want to go check out the company store. I've been told it's not all baseball caps with logos on it, although a baseball cap with a logo on it would actually be kind of cool, so I want to see what they've got. I've also heard you can buy a laptop for $50 through a sort of raffle thing, but I dunno how much I would want to pay for a used Dell laptop. Save myself the effort and get a new one - they're almost as cheap.

Also tonight, I'm watching a movie. Not Monty Python, although that would be awesome, but Blood Diamond, which showed up via Netflix a while ago, and I haven't watched it yet. I've heard it's good, but you don't want to watch it twice. That's fine, because I'm only renting it. :)

San Juan Island.... sans camera

Today mom and I went to San Juan Island with some friends of hers from Bellevue. It's an absolutely lovely place. I went there once before, to Friday Harbor, when I was in high school by whale watching boat. I got seasick. That wasn't so much fun. But today was wonderful. If I had been organizing the trip, I would have done things quite a bit differently, but I wasn't. For example, it's not exactly a large island. I would have preferred to rent a bike and see the island that way. Instead, we rode around in a big van. Also, we went on a short hike, and one of the ladies is rather overweight and could barely manage the 2.5mi or so. She's a lovely person, but she would probably do well to be more active. There was also a huge kayaking group, and it was such a beautiful day today, just as good as yesterday.

Unfortunately, I had only a disposable camera that I bought at the general store in Friday Harbor. Still, the place is simply so beautiful that my pictures will be good regardless of the inferiority of my equipment. There was one point, walking along the coastline, that I had to stop and just absorb the beauty all around me because it was so overwhelming. I didn't appreciate my home enough while I lived here before. I won't make that mistake again. Speaking of cameras, I believe I'm going to buy myself a new lens if I successfully get this job in Seattle. My current standard lens is fairly low quality, and I want to take better pictures. The camera body is quite good, but the lens really makes or breaks the picture, and I can see that clearly with the difference between the pictures I take with the telephoto lens and my standard, because the standard is a low quality consumer product and the telephoto is a medium quality product. I would like to get an actually good lens and see what I can do with it.

Last night, I saw '3:10 to Yuma' with M. It was wonderful!! I have always loved Westerns, it reminds me of going to visit my grandpa. We always watched the Sunday morning Western re-runs. I don't know how many reruns of Bonanza and Gunsmoke I've seen, but Marshal Dillon (played by James Arness) was my hero as a kid. (The Westerns were mainly because we weren't allowed to watch anything else but painting shows and the news, and you can only take so much Brillo-head before wanting to watch something else). Anyway, Russell Crowe and Christian Bale OWNED their parts, and Ben Foster did a fantastic job as Charlie Prince. I really, really enjoyed the performances in this movie. When I get Netflix, I'm going to order everything Christian Bale has ever done that I haven't seen yet. I am, as ever, completely blown away by his talent.

Addendum

Anyone who's ever seen the movie by the creators of South Park, Team America, knows how utterly brilliant Trey Parker and Matt Stone are. I didn't always like South Park because I thought it was all fart jokes and other humor of a similar intellectual level. Then I actually started paying attention and realized how incredibly brilliant they are. Absolutely nothing is safe from their lampooning (which I applaud, even when they skewer issues/people that I believe in - that's the point of our system), and this was especially clear in Team America.

I mention this because tonight one of the Germans mentioned the movie (because of Matt Damon - hilarious) and it prompted me to look it up again and I found this article. The reason I loved the movie when I saw it originally is because, as the authors say, Parker and Stone take the pompous and the overdone and turn it into the ridiculous (Kim Jong Il singing, anyone?). I honestly can't think of Kim Jong Il any longer without having "I'm so ronery, oh so ronery..." play in my head. Kind of takes the wind out of a dictator's sails when he knows people are laughing at him.

Maybe we should all follow their example. A little more laughter, a little less terror tactics. I don't understand how many of the security measures implemented in recent years have actually helped prevent incidents of terror. Such as the security guard in New York who took my water bottle, or the security lady in Tokyo who jacked my Coke. Yes, indeed - I am planning on wreaking havoc on my next flight with this Coke can. I fail to see how such things make me any safer. But it does make me feel at least a little less unhappy about the threat posed by douchebag jihadists or my own government to think about them perhaps a little more the way Cartman would.

Movie Review + Germans

I went to see a movie tonight with my German tourist friends from Melaka, the Bourne Ultimatum. Much fun was had by half of us, one girl from Britain prefers romantic comedies, and one German guy decided he likes Bruce Willis better. But, I thought it was fantastic! Lots of fast chase scenes, fight scenes, jumping around, clever traps, clever ways out of traps - really, a very well done movie, and I enjoyed every minute of it. The sound editing is pretty good, too, good enough that I actually noticed how good the sound editing was.

I really like Germans. I also like Austrians. I don't like Italians. I have decided that this is because Italians are too friendly. In a bad way. I have also realized that the reputation some Germans have for being stand-offish is probably deserved, but more than likely results from the shyness a lot of Germans have about their English. They're so much fun to hang out with when they're speaking their own language. Amazing how that happens. Of course, none of my jokes work in German, but I sure am learning a lot. I have learned a lot of fantastic new German phrases, too, to add to my collection from Austria. :)

All in all, it's shaping up to be quite the nice final week here in Singapore. Not only do I have my imminent return to look forward to, I have also done some fun stuff and met some very nice people in the process. What else could one ask for?

'Anticipation'

I'm listening to Carly Simon as I sit in my humid little room, in anticipation of tomorrow's fun adventures. 'Anticipation' is really a rather good song, it's too bad it's forever associated with the ultimate tease - a Heinz ketchup bottle. 'You're So Vain' is still my favorite, though, just for the 'you had one eye in the mirror' line.

Tomorrow, we're going to the zoo! I'm very much looking forward to that because I haven't been to the zoo in years, since I went to the zoo at Schoenbrunn in Austria in 2003. I am going to take my nice camera, make sure I have plenty of film, and snap lots of animals. Definitely bringing the telephoto to this place - I am really hoping for a Bengal tiger picture. If it comes even close to my brother's awesome picture when they went to the zoo a while back, I'll be quite satisfied.

Cinemax is currently running the old Star Trek movies, tonight was Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home. The storyline is really quite terrible, as with most Trek movies, but the one-liners are fantastic! As is having a Russian (Chekov) ask about where the nuclear 'wessels' are in 1980's US, and watching the great tard William Shatner for an entire movie. I'd never watched the whole movie through before, having only seen parts of it on TV (sorry, but I'm not going to bend over backwards to see Star Trek IV), and I kinda felt sorry for Leonard Nimoy, who reprised the role of Spock - something he had said he never wanted to do again - and that he will also be reprising his role in the new movie. Does anyone know Leonard Nimoy for ANYthing else, other than Star Trek? Maybe the Bilbo Baggins song.... :)

By the way, in case you were ever in any doubt as to the technical quality of the Star Trek series, The Voyage Home was nominated for four Academy Awards, for cinematography, sound editing, music, and sound (just nominated, though). It, of course, was nominated for piles of awards by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, but only won for best costumes. Best costumes?? Well, whatever.

Quotes!
McCoy: My God, man. Drilling holes in his head isn't the answer!

[on 20th Century America]
Kirk: This is an extremely primitive and paranoid culture.

Reviews

It is an unfortunate habit of most of the population of the planet to believe that what they have to say is inherently interesting to someone else. I am no exception.

For various reasons, I have had the opportunity to view a number of movies in the past few days. Here's the quick and dirty for your reading pleasure.

"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" - Excellent! Loved it. I liked Johnny Depp's version of Willy Wonka, completely different than Gene Wilder's interpretation. I loved the cinematography, the colors, the dancing/singing Oompah-Loompahs - everything. It was a very good movie, in my humble opinion, and if you haven't seen it, you should. I watched this one, along with Madagascar, with the boys, so it was really fun to see the movie through a child's eyes. They were also impressed.

"Madagascar" - I was pleased with this movie as well, because I got exactly what I expected: a cute, decent story involving talking animals that solve deep emotional problems in less than two hours, complete with singing and dancing. This is better than a lot of the drivel that gets made for the children's audience, though, and I would MUCH rather watch "Madagascar" than the "Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy."

"The Fugitive" - I have always liked Harrison Ford, just because you know what to expect from his action movies. He's always the everyman placed in an extraordinary situation and he has to rise to the challenge and kick butt. Which he always does, much to the audience's satisfaction. Some of my friends in junior high had the Backstreet Boys on their walls. I had Indiana Jones. Anyway, I had not noticed before the pharmaceutical company angle in the movie. He, Richard Kimble, is supposed to be killed because he wouldn't lie about the efficacy of a drug being tested at the hospital where he worked, but his wife is killed instead. Fascinating that this was a topic back when the movie was made in 1992, and yet nothing has been done, and the problem is now far worse. Big pharmas are scary. Very scary.

"Knocked Up" - I saw this in the theater tonight as their father and his girlfriend were watching "The Fellowship of the Ring" with the boys and I wanted to not be there. It was either this or "Vacancy" and I much preferred this. It is irreverent, funny, sweet, and by turns, gross (she has a baby, and they show part of the birth - I was 'sick' the day we were supposed to watch the baby being born video in health class - I really don't want to think about that part of the process until it's absolutely necessary). I enjoyed the performances - Katharine Heigl is better than I expected, and I adore Paul Rudd anyway (Phoebe's husband from "Friends").

Thus ends the - of course - fascinating reviews for the evening. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing "Rush Hour 3" - you know exactly what to expect from Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan. Should be a blast!

Of Trekkies and power outages

This article just came out: in the new Star Trek movie, we will get a look at the young heroes of the original series - Spock, James T. Kirk, and I assume Bones and Scotty well, maybe even the rest of the crew, who knows? Anyway, I'm rather happy about the people they have working on the show (as in, SO GLAD Rick Berman is not directing the creative aspects of the film). The last film was absolutely terrible (Nemesis - they killed Data!!), so this one, if it's done even half well, will be a vast improvement. And no, in case you are now chuckling that I'm interested in Star Trek, I do not dress up, go to conventions, or study Klingon. You can, you know - learn Klingon on tape, and such.

This evening for dinner, I had a rather unwelcome surprise. The power suddenly went out when I attempted to use the oven. Their father had not yet attempted to use it because he didn't know how and couldn't read the directions (not in English, made by a German company), so he gave the directions to me to figure out. I had it all figured out, was ready to pop my mac'n'cheese into the oven, when pop! - out went the power in the entire apartment. This has happened to me before, but because of my blowdryer, so I did what I usually did, turn off all the breakers, then turn them on again. This didn't work. So, after getting the guard a couple of times, and talking to the manager, I finally figured out a way to test each switch individually. So, the power is now back on (go me!), but we can't use the oven. So, it became stovetop mac'n'cheese. Ugh.

At least we still have our movies for Friday night movie night. Tonight, it's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Madagascar" for the boys, and after they go to bed, "The Fugitive" for me. I like that show.