On Friday afternoon, I received an, er, interesting phone call.
Blatantly A Salesman: Hello, this is Everest*. We’re going to see some of your neighbours… [sales patter about double glazing]
Me: All our windows are double-glazed and they’re pretty new, thanks.
BAT: How about doors? We can drop by and show you our brochure. Can we come by for a chat tomorrow?
Me: No. We’re busy.
BAT: How about Sunday?
Me: No, we’re busy.
BAT: Well, we’ll just drop a brochure off on Monday afternoon, then. Can I take your name?
Me: Why?
BAT: It just says ‘The Householder’ here.
Me: I’d prefer not to give you my name.
BAT: We’ll end it here, then. *click*
I guess their windows are selling so well that they’ve taken to trying to sell mailing lists.
* Unless it’s someone trying to sully Everest’s name…?
I’m getting pretty fed up hearing the endless ‘analysis’ of The Libyan being released On Compassionate Grounds. That’s why I’m going to talk about it. For the last time, I hope.
- If people outside of Libya didn’t make such a fuss, The Libyan’s return home would have been much less celebrated. They’ve practically martyred him while he’s still alive.
- If the decision was taken to send The Libyan to a hospice in Scotland, no one would want him in their neighbourhood anyway.
- Providing the security force needed to keep The Libyan from being sprung or murdered would have cost a phenomenal amount of money, money the government doesn’t have.
- Choosing to deny The Libyan release on compassionate grounds even though he meets the criteria is giving The Libyan extra-special treatment.
- The outraged American government will still buy Libya’s oil and gas. Let’s have the outraged American families lobby their government to stop dealing with Libya and telling the rest of the country to suck it up and pay more for their fuel.
- I wonder how Alex Salmond likes being America’s whipping boy?
Neil and I have undertaken Quite The Project*. We bought a box set featuring all the movies that are, supposedly, part of The Exorcist series, and here’s how we’ve judged them so far (because judging horror films is an important part of a cultured person’s life, didn’t you know):
- Dominion — hmm, the plot kind of sounds like Exorcist: The Beginning, which we recall seeing once a few years ago. Another young person gets possessed, there’s an underground cavern for demon worship and a very elaborate church with scenes of God casting Lucifer down to hell. The lady doctor is quite hot. The movie is slow, the digital graphics are woeful, generally NOT GOOD.
- Exorcist: The Beginning — we thought Dominion came before this one but Google tells me it was released one year later (because this one got bad reviews). It’s basically a similar story using similar sets and a more conventionally beautiful doctor, the former Bond chick. The digital effects are better, the story is slightly more what you would expect, but it’s weird watching both prequels in the same night. Deja vu! But also NOT TOO GOOD.
- The Exorcist — the original and the best, right? I’ve never seen this, only a few scenes here and there, and I’ve read small parts of the novel that inspired it (somewhat nasty for a primary school kid to read, I think). PRETTY DECENT, but why would the demon be all, “The Bitch is Mine!” then simply acquiesce when Father Karras shouts, “Take me!”? I also like how really only Regan’s room was the scene of the action, with the rest of the house left relatively untouched by the possession. Also, the beginning of the film shows the demon statue uncovered by Father Merrin (again?! He’s older in this one, surely he remembers finding it three decades previous) as standing proud above ground, not in the underground cavern (from the two prequels — he must have been really confused by that).
- Exorcist II: The Heretic — one of the WORST FILMS EVER. Words cannot describe how woefully bad this is. All I can do is compare it to two recent film choices Neil has made (Outlander and The Sin Eaters), and put it to you that Neil should no longer be allowed to choose any of the films we watch.
Exorcist III beckons (heh).
* This is distinct from The Kitchen Project, which we should have hopefully concluded in a few weeks’ time (finally). Neil is allowed to do DIY.
Quote of the day from Still crazy after all these years:
To believe this, you have to believe that the Bushies were both wicked enough to murder thousands of Americans and brilliant enough to execute such a mind-bogglingly sophisticated plot without a single leak—in a culture where Richard Nixon could not even hush up a burglary.
I actually agree that Megrahi — terminally ill — should be released on compassionate grounds. Victim’s families who are angry are understandably so, but he’s going to die soon anyway, and compassion is really something we should hold on to as human beings.The reality is we need to keep Libya sweet too, and the US is just making noise so they look (to domestic audiences) like they tried, but they want Libya’s oil and gas too, you can quote me on that.
Methinks someone is jealous:
Mad Men is an unpleasant little entry in the genre of Now We Know Better. We watch and know better about male chauvinism, homophobia, anti-semitism, workplace harassment, housewives’ depression, nutrition and smoking… Mad Men is currently said to be the best and ‘smartest’ show on American TV. We’re doomed.
The genius of Mad Men is it shows even though we’re supposed to know better and we’re apparently more enlightened, more open, more tolerant, more whatever, we’ve gone completely the other way in terms of relating to others and we’re as miserable as ever. And it’s damned entertaining drama — it’s not a documentary, people! IMHO.
(And Don Draper is still hot.)
Via TEV.
I don’t like separate CSS files that come packaged with plugins. It’s a pain the bum when you need to customise it and the developer releases an update.
- I love Mad Men. I’ve seen season 1 and am currently waiting to borrow the season 2 box set. I’ll need to take my time since season 3 has just started in the US.
- Don Draper is really hot. OMG… *swoon*
- The one bad side effect of the show? I really miss smoking. They’re lighting up every fucking minute of it.
It’s ironic that I feel vindicated when a respected author* shares the same opinion: Ruiz Zafón dismisses divide between high and low art as ‘cultural fraud’.
One of the world’s most popular authors has entered the debate over high and low art, saying that there is no such thing as good literature, only good writing.
…
“I’m not interested in having a snobby thought police that would tell me what is good, what is bad, that I cannot listen to a Britney Spears record if I feel like it or I cannot read Dan Brown or whatever. I think we all have a brain between our ears and we can find our own way.”
I can’t bear it when people get all sniffy about things being lowbrow or middlebrow — what counts is it has an impact on you and gets you to think about things from a different point of view, rather than being so obscure and impenetrable that only the author and their closest friends understand it, and the ‘literary set’ simply pretending to get it in order to look smart.
Good writing is good writing. It’s subjective because authors’ styles are different and will appeal to different people. The only people who don’t or won’t comprehend this are those who are insecure!
* Not that I’ve read any of his work… but I’m happy to perpetuate the fallacy of appealing to authority any day in this case.
The Guardian interviews A-ha: WTF is up with Morten Harket’s skin? It’s tighter than Pal’s drums in the Take On Me video.
And now no ham?! Ham is one of my favourite foods ever and I now have to restrict myself so it’s an occasional treat? How wretched.
Inglourious Basterds. Quentin Tarantino. Blood, blood, blood!
We accidentally got tickets to the first preview at the Cameo on the weekend (I thought it was already on general release — which shows you how much attention I pay to entertainment news now that we are bereft of regular teevee). It was a mistake because I wasn’t interested in sharing the experience with a bunch of Tarantino fans, but c’est la vie.
And thank Deity it didn’t suck. It was a pretty funny ride, with Brad Pitt doing a good job as Lieutenant Aldo Raine (how actors manage to contort their jaws into funny positions and hold them for a long time is really beyond me). For some reason I was pretty taken with Michael Fassbender, who played the sole Brit who (briefly) joined the Basterds. Turns out he was in Band of Brothers, which may explain it — I’ve got a soft spot for the actors who were in that most excellent series.
I was expecting blood and gore, and the film didn’t disappoint. For some reason, though, I kept forgetting it was a Tarantino flick — some bits just didn’t seem to scream ‘Tarantino’ to me, and I think that’s good. There was something about the treatment / portrayal of Shosanna Dreyfus that seemed more sensitive and less ‘impossibly cool’ than I’ve come to expect of anything by Tarantino (despite my ‘meh’ feelings about him as a director, I have seen quite a few of his films, and they’ve either met my expectations or I’ve been underwhelmed).
So. Inglourious Basterds. Funny. Outrageous. If you’re the type who likes your revenge cold, you’ll love it.
The film, in the end credits, was supposedly partly inspired by true events. Not sure if it was this one about a team of European Jewish troops commanded by the Poms. The Cameo is screening a couple of ‘Men on a mission’ war flicks from the, er, 50s or 60s next weekend and I’m pretty stoked about that.
(P.S. It is very uncool to clap when the end credits roll, especially if it isn’t a special screening and the actors, directors, or producers aren’t there to appreciate your, er, appreciation. Who the fuck cares otherwise?)
GM foods being cultivated in Scotland — why the hell not? It’s better than pesticide-laden crops that have been (face it) genetically modified over time anyway!
It’s a good thing we didn’t postpone our gym trip to Sunday — we went out on Saturday night and ended up staying out way too late with Stu, Graham, and Anna (and earlier with Rich and Michael). It was a short one, we got there less than an hour before they were closing for the night. Just 25 minutes on the treadmill, 10 minutes on the cross-trainer, and a further five minutes on the hand cycle while waiting for Neil to finish on the rower.
Oh man, the ‘tops’ category on FML is truly fucking tragic.
In memory of John Hughes, here’s Simple Minds’ Don’t You Forget About Me, a song I will always associate with The Breakfast Club.
Detention was something I only read about and this film really set up my impression of American adolescence. There I was, in a boring convent school, and these kids (boys! and girls! in the same room!!) really understood life, man.
