Imaginary Gardens

I've been going back to a few old obsessions of mine lately. I've been back to the dmeb2, checked out the message board and squeed at recognizing names and signature lines. (ScottMaul! MaulMaus!) Oh, how I miss lurking there... I may've posted, what, twice? (Black Aliss was I.)

I've also gone through the Planet of the Apes 2001 (trailer) sites, cursing the idiot who took the official site down. (I'll never forgive 'em. It was so chocak-a-block full of stuff! Info!)

I don't quite know how to explain what I feel for this movie. It's a really frustrating movie for me to watch, I'll rant at it incessantly (and seriously, I need to record an ongoing-rant because I pick the shit out of it - and you thought Momo needed a Science Stick beating), but... There's some bits where I feel like forgiving it everything. (Oh, Tim Roth, you beautiful man you.)

( Video to refresh your memory )

But anyway, rant a-hoy. This is an easy rant, because it's about the ending. Not what I consider the ending, because my brain blanks out the last five minutes of the film, but the actual ending nonetheless. I don't even try ranting at the ending usually, because it's just so beyond everything... See? It makes me incoherent, that's how fucked up it is.

Now, evadne_noel once described it in her Breadbox Edition (which she's totally welcome to start doing again pleasepleaseplease):

MARK flies off toward THE ENDING. THE ENDING runs MARK down, and then promptly sits on the AUDIENCE'S head.

This is completely accurate. (If you haven't watched the movie, I'm afraid YouTube can't help with the head-sitting. Alas.)

Anyway, why am I in rant-mode? Some people think the ending made sense. Some people obviously weren't watching the same movie I was. ( Cut for spoilers on the off-chance you haven't watch it and really, really want to sometime. )


Meme via qthewetsprocket: Howard Garner's Eight Types of Intelligence ( Read more... )

Meme via fallen_iceangel:

1) Make a list of fifteen characters first, and keep it to yourself for the moment. (That way you're not leading the questions asked to fit the characters.)

2) Ask your flist to post questions in the comments.

For example: ( Read more... )

( My questions, with my answers which are almost minifics )


Links of the Day: ( Read more... )


* Leo, Planet of the Apes (2001)

Just a little heads-up to say I'm a) not dead, b) tanned liek woah, and c) completely alone. (Uncles left on Monday for holidays, so it's just me and crappy Spanish television programs.) *sigh* Off to Burgos (Flickr) on Tuesday to see Elder Uncle and Great Aunt. Am currently in Cubelles (Flickr). I've read A Thousand Blazing Suns by Khaled Hosseini (instead of my self study) and can report that it made me bawl the whole way through. The fact that I'm quite isolated and also PMSing may have made me more prone to the wibbles, but it's a hard book to read regardless. Lovely, but hard.

Meme: Steampunk Style, c/o capn_mactastic ( Read more... )

Links of the Day:
News: ( Read more... )

News and Reviews On Livejournal: ( Read more... )

Fandom-made: ( Read more... )

Random: ( Read more... )


* Cleveland Amory

I think I might have just finished my first thesis. *whew* All the itty bitty details are taken care of and numbers have been triple-checked. It's got 5 pages of Tables of Contents, 11 pages of Bibliography and a whopping 63 pages of text. I'm so proud of this baby :)

Also? I bought food. Fooooooood. Aw yeah. I made a sort of mac'n'cheese thing yesterday. I actually had breakfast at home today. It's fantastic. (I also should go home now and make some more of that mac'n'cheese, 'cause it's 2 pm.)

Links of the Day:
aeolora posts the NBC analysis of Obama's speech at the DNC in 2004. Watch the speech itself here.
aeolora also posts a link to one of the worst examples of animal cruelty - or just plain cruyelty - I've seen. Not for the faint of heart. It involves kittens.
wtf_nature rekindles an old subject, brain parasites spread by cats changing human personality for the better (if you're female) and showcases a freakishly-long-necked Assassin Spider. And by freakishly-long I mean you need to stare at it a bit until you figure out that it is a spider.
wtf_science, a new community, for when you want a bit more information than just omgwtf!
Lost: The Answers are Here" - Sky One - Part 1 of 3 (Amusing, but there are no answers. Of course.)

I'm having a hard time getting my shit together and doing anything at all. ( Teh woe, it sucketh. )


In other news, I bleedin' hate dictionary.com's Word of the Day thingy. Why? Because the English word fo the day is facticious. Spanish word of the day? Amarillo. Fucking yellow. And it's always like that. Dude, it's a "word of the day", not a "learn Spanish in 2 weeks" webpage. If you can put obscure words in English, damn well do it in Spanish too. That, or tomorrow's English Word of the Day better as hell be dog.

ETA: I'll have you know it's taken me over 40 minutes to write this tripe. I am that slow today.


Links of the Day:
hardvice's list of people will be the first against the wall when the Revolution comes.
Blog: Stuff White People Like which is fun, except I mentally erase the "white" from the title and replace it for a social class
Highbrow/Lowbrow and Brilliant/Despicable Axis
How to trick iTunes into skipping that annoying minutes-long silence at the end of a song.


* Subash Nemwang

Despite actually managing to wake up in the am today, I didn't get around to doing anything till 'round 7 pm, which is when I got ready to talk a little walkabout, for sanity's sake. Granted, I'm a bit special when it comes to walkabouts: I take a street and keep on going**, not slowing the pace, not caring that gods only know where I am, just going on and on, noting landmarks, slightly freaking out because I'm not freaking out about the fact that I don't know where I am and I'm walking all alone in a dark empty street. Sane? Yeah...

Amazingly enough, I don't get lost. (I even got asked for directions twice, once by a biker and once by a Russian lady, whom I directed to a map by the tram-stop after waving vaguely in the direction of the Central Station.) I got three "Hello-o" cat-calls, but I was armed with an iPod and fast stride, so by the time the last "-o" comes out, they're sucking dust.

The company I had on my iPod was of a somewhat depressing nature, what with it being American Gods - more precisely, the bit where Shadow's on the World Tree. Uplifting little thing to walk along to, yeah?

Anyway, I'm back, not having done anything that I'd meant to do - internships, doctors***, residences - but I got off the couch for an over two hour walk, so yays.

Oh, yeah, I ought to mention that yesterday I went to Amsterdam with Landen - well, we met on the train after a bit of a hiatus involving him getting on the train I'd just gotten off of - and went museum-ing. We hit the Van Gogh (horrifyingly pronounced /goh/, like you're hawking up a lung) and then the Rijksmuseum. ( Read more... )

I think I'll be popping off to Amsterdam again tomorrow, 'cause the church next to the train station is giving a free concert (Gregorian chant). I might even catch a film afterwards. Go me! I'll have to also see about checking out the Oude Kerk and the Jordan neighbourhood.

(Yeah, Mom's sort of instilled in me an apreciation for church architecture. We always hit 'em when we tourist. Plus, I really like wandering into a church and having a little sitdown. And nothing beats the smell of church incense.)

You know what? Living so near Amsterdam gives me all sorts of not-good ideas. I mean, if I ever care to give a hookah a try, I can. If I ever want to get a tattoo: hey, this is tattoo-central! And then, of course, there's the Red Light District, with all of its interesting shops. Not, of course, like I'll ever do any of this. *hangs head in lame shame*

Ooh, I also had a horrendeously disturbing dream, one that seemed to go on for ages but in real time - like, days and days. I can't remember most of it now, mainly because I've been metaphorically scrubbing my memory with bleach ever since I fumbled awake, but I'd been captured in the forests of Thailand and taken by the judiciary system, along with a number of others. I was then put in jail, notable for its cramped rooms, numerous stories, bamboo furnishings and hellish conditions. Serious suffering going on there, mate. Then it sort of oozed into on-deck slave-ship conditions, but still all tropical and horrible. Obviously a certain passage in American Gods dredged up stock slave footage from the mental image department, and combined it with new Forget You Had a Daughter footage. Visual imagination, I hate you.


Links of the Day:
How We Met: David Tennant and Arabella Wier - Adorable, really, and I love how I can just hear Tennant saying it in my head.
versaphile has a Tennant/Simm RPF trilogy: Kiss Me Quick, Mind the Gap, and O Ffwrnais Awen


* Last Night I Went Out Walking, Handsome Family
** This actually works surprisingly well. Once you get a mite tired, thinking of all the way you've come that you eventually have to undo, you just turn your ass around and *voom* path in reverse, right to your doorstep.
*** Not Doctors, just doctors, apointments with. I wouldn't say no to doing the Doctor, mind you.
**** And here it was nice to have Lander, 'cause he grew up in Japan and assorted Asian countries.
^ As seen in my abnormal psychology classes. A disturbing number of creative geniuses were manic-depressive. These discoveries are either true or the result of a curious trend in psychology. Like historical figures all being gay. Truth or fashionable trend? Meh.

Serious Meme from fallen_iceangel:

"Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?" - Ernest Gaines.

We would like to know who really believes in gay rights on livejournal. There is no bribe of a miracle or anything like that. If you truly believe in gay rights, then repost this and title the post as "Gay Rights". If you don't believe in gay rights, then just ignore this. Thanks.

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.

though I agree with apostle_of_eris, who says: I, for one, do not believe in gay rights. That is, I do not believe there are any rights which inhere to a person because of gayness. I believe in human rights.


* ibid meme, because I'm feeling contrary.

Depp May Be Too Busy For Good Omens.

*blinks*

*breathes*

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

*cries*

Crowley, darling...

*sniffle*


ETA: I have been pining for this film for years. Years.


* Christopher Campbell, ibid link.

A whole boatload of second-by-second Secret Window screencaps which I can't play with now. Some Once Upon a Time In Mexico screencaps too. I'd really like to make a banner using 'caps from the two films, 'cause Cracking a Fragile... is stuck in my head.

I took a chapter of Cracking a Fragile... with me for the weekend, and it ended on "That's when the door opened," which was just cruel.

I'm bored and would like a meme.

Or a whole bunch of quotes, like Reba's Eclectic List or Gray Watson's List.

But mainly, imdb.com is my current favorite for quotes. Even if it means I have to think of movies to look up.

But I'll read about psychotic behaviour instead. But I swear to god if my workmate doesn't stop whistling, I'm going to fucking "freak right out".

ETA: Communities listing ouatim in their interests: ( Read more... )


* Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Wiki says:

"In late June 2006, several reports indicated that Depp has joined the cast of the upcoming science fiction-action film, I Am Legend, which also stars Will Smith and will begin filming in September of 2006, although this has since been proven to be a false rumor."

Guess where I exclaimed a throughouly unpleasant expletative.

And guess just where, exactly, my jaw dropped in the following:

"Depp also owns an island in the Bahamas, where he spends some of his time."

And all things are explained here:

"He has thirteen tattoos, including (...) a sparrow flying over water with the word "Jack" below it (the sparrow is flying towards him rather than away from him as it is in Pirates of the Caribbean, and it's for his love of the role he played in the movies)"

And to add to the list of words I've learned and can remember when-and-where details:

Kismet (Turkish, Urdu as well as Hindi and Arabic, "fate"--derived from the Arabic term qisma; modified in Persian as qismat and then from Turkish it came to English usage) can refer to several things:

Kismet (principle), the magnetic attractive force that actualizes the playing out of karma; often used in the positive sense


Theoretically I'm writting up university applications. In practice, I'm freezing my feet off and really longing for a functional bathroom at the old office. Hoo-boy...

ETA: For next year, How to Talk Like a PIrate, Instructional Video

Linkies from metaquotes:

ironychan considers the links between Vikings and Queen Elizabeth II in this post about geneology and the Royal Family.

badmagic posts a poll of pirates vs. ninjas vs. monkeies, vs. robots vs. zombies. Winner so far? Pirates. (My co-worker's a die-hard ninja sympathizer.)


Ines lent me Gladiator, so I could finally get my Commodus/Maximus fix. Except not. Not even the most imaginative storytelling could get me to accept a C/M fic in the movie's storyline. Before the storyline, however, is another matter.

I watched all the extras, such as an hour-long documentary on gladiators or interview-snippets of Russel Crow. (Who is actually funny and charismatic, even though I can't get the "threw phone at hotel clerk" rumour out of my head.)

There was an extra on the music, which fully deserved its own extra, because it is amazing. (Plus, the composer's called Hans. Mr Zimmer*, I think.) The song they put during the credits is fantabulous and will always be acompanied in my head by the image of Josie signing along to it in first year, even though neither of us knew what the hell the lady was saying.

I particularly enjoyed the cut scenes. My faves were the two with Joaquin Phoenix.

( In one scene... )

( The other scene... )

Then I rewatched my favorite scenes int he movie, which aren't so much "scenes" as itty-bitty moments.

( They are: )

Rereading the quotes on imdb, I hesitantly declare this to be my favorite quote for its application**** in real life:

Maximus: I may die here in this cell or in the arena tomorrow. What possible difference can I make?

* "Mr Room"

** This is quite true in the case of Maximus.

*** Your dead family members, but not as zombies.

**** Not, y'know, literally. The sentiment.