Twisted Spinster

Well, actually, I just turned it off — the Spike channel was showing Star Wars: the Phantom Menace — aka “Episode I,” and I watched most of it until I got bored — the Big Boring Speech scenes between the Queen and the Senate is where I always zone out. I remember what happens more or less at the end anyway, and the movie isn’t so good that I feel like wading through the aforementioned BBS just to get to the ending scenes of the dispatch of various uninteresting characters. Alas Liam Neeson plays one of those, the dullest ninja-samurai ever filmed, or at least ever in any movie with a ninja-samurai character that I’ve seen. But much worse than his character — in fact, much worse, I have now decided, than the misbegotten “comic relief” CGI creation Jar Jar Binks — is the complete nonentity playing the young Anakin. Movie history is replete with talentless child actors, and Jake Lloyd is up there in the stratosphere of complete lack of charisma or acting ability.

I haven’t seen the other two “prequels” (since Spike is showing them this weekend I guess I’ll watch and remedy that lack, or maybe I’ll just clean that tile grout in the bathroom…) I don’t know if those movies contain the standard Sports Scene that this one has — the pod race. For some reason most children-aimed adventure films have scenes where the heroes have to engage in some sort of sports activity — for example, the quidditch games in the Harry Potter films. I mostly find these scenes boring, because I am, to put it mildly, not interesting in sports. However, they can be made to be part of the story, which for the most part the quidditch games are (there’s almost always some nefarious magical activity going on that will tie in later). Or they can just seem tacked on as if the script writers needed some way to get the plot moving and the characters out of their current environment so they came up with this scenario — the unlikely stranding of a queen of a space empire (well, a “republic,” as if something with a hereditary ruler can be called a “republic” — I guess it can in Hollywood!) on a remote planet, the even more unlikely circumstance of there being no way for this monarch to be able to persuade the locals to fix her ship, so that the space knights protecting her must resort to some weird local sports ritual to “raise money” to buy the necessary parts to repair her ship, etc. Anyway, the whole thing seems written as if whoever was in charge said “we need something to get the kids’ attention — all this politics stuff is boring! Got it — a car race! Write it in — give it some sort of reason and make it science-fictiony with aliens and things!”

Then there is the CGI. The movie was made — or released, I never remember what the date the TV Guide shows means — in 1999, which means the CGI or whatever they were calling it back then is nearly ten years old. My, what a difference time makes — the alien creatures and scenes all look so fake now. Well, Jar Jar always looked fake, but that was a flaw in the character’s conception.

One more thing: most of the characters are standard adventure drama clichéd nonentities, and the actors play their parts stiffly, as if they didn’t believe in their parts. Oddly enough the acting in the first three Star Wars movies (the so-called “sequels” that featured Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and the rest) was much more naturalistic and believable, so I blame it on a failure of direction.

My complete disinterest in visiting Mexico has only been enhanced by this “Mexico only” (not in the days of the internet, losers!) ad for Absolut vodka. And even if I was a vodka drinker — I’m not anymore, I stick to wine mostly these days — I now have a reason besides “I’m broke” to not buy this particular brand.

Yeah, this is my least original headline, but I don’t care — I read Ace because, well, oh just read it. And my dad told me octopus tasted like chicken. Let’s just say this Miami preteen was not fooled.

Update: okay, that came out wrong. Um — never mind.

Oh look, “Dirty Harry” over at Libertas is turning into a good little dhimmi. I hope he’s got plenty of black cloth so his women can make their burqas, and I hope he’s socking away 2 percent of his income for the infidel tax. I hope the multicult points he wins from this are worth it.

For a saner view, read Steve H.

Update: I suppose I’d better repeat something I stuck towards the bottom of an earlier post on this controversy over the Fitna movie. It’s this:

When are people going to get the fact that it doesn’t matter what “moderate Muslims” (if such a creature actually exists and isn’t mythical) think about anything? They have no more power than the infidel to control what Muslim terrorists think and do, and all efforts to give these “moderates” an opportunity to show some spine have mostly led to failure. Talk about preaching to the converted — I’m sure a “moderate Muslim” wants to be left alone to live his life the same as we all do. That’s nice, but it’s no help at all in any kind of war — of ideas, of guns and bombs, of anything. All this nicey-nice talk (as a ultra-liberal professor of mine used to say) does for us is make us feel warm and fuzzy, and we are already too inclined to indulge ourselves in this manner.

Chasing after the moderate Muslim unicorn with the sugarcube of Western friendship is of no use — we aren’t being threatened by moderates.

One more: of course, Ghost of a Flea has much to say. Cowardice of the West — exactly.

I cranked the a/c down to below 65 degrees (Fahrenheit, of course) to cool my menopausal self down, and I watched Doctor Who episodes on Netflix’s neat watch-’em-on-the-computer thing. Take that, light-hating bitches.

(Second link via.)

Well, I lugged another box of books down to my car a few minutes ago. That’s all I could manage. I think I’m getting tendinitis from my computer mouse. That’s my excuse, anyway.

The books are going to my storage unit. Eventually. Tomorrow I am going to try to get the rest of the books in the car (see if I move to another upstairs apartment — maybe not the dumbest move I’ve made this past year but it was pretty dumb) and a few other things (my paintings, mostly), and then I have to do some serious culling of my belongings. Apparently Goodwill doesn’t do donation pickups, so fuck them — I’m going to post a sign offering free furniture on the mail kiosk. Goodwill would just jack the price up anyway — this way someone will get a nice couch and stuff for free. As long as they remove it from the apartment.

Grumble.

By the way, thank you everyone for your donations. The fundraiser is still going — it will be until I get a job and get a paycheck. No word on the part-time temp job, I sent the resume out to some Craigslist ads on the advice of an ex-coworker (one of our other ex-coworkers got a job through Craigslist — I’ve pretty much given up on Careerbuilder, all I get is ads for those fake university sites; you know, the ones that set you up to get a phone call about scams like the University of North Phoenix or whatever). And tomorrow I’m going to hit the Publixes and other grocery stores around here. They’re always hiring cashiers. And there’s always Disney — but I live nearly an hour away from them, so they aren’t exactly practical. Then again, it depends where I eventually move to, doesn’t it?

Okay, blah blah blah about my miserable life is over. I’m actually feeling a bit better about things. But I am going to try to post about something interesting (such as, not my life) at some point tonight. How about the way frothing Muslim death eaters are continuing to make every miserable? Any minute now I expect to here of a real-life version of the Dark Mark (maybe a vertiginous, phosphorescently glowing crescent and star! I suppose a skull being technically a face, or the underpart of one, is off-limits to Real Muslims™) in the sky above a major Western city. PS: do you suppose Dirty Harry is now sorry about writing up a mealy-mouthed “it’s not nice to Moderate Muslims” slam of the Fitna movie? I doubt it — Libertas has its moments, and then it has its off-moments. This is one of the latter. When are people going to get the fact that it doesn’t matter what “moderate Muslims” (if such a creature actually exists and isn’t mythical) think about anything? They have no more power than the infidel to control what Muslim terrorists think and do, and all efforts to give these “moderates” an opportunity to show some spine have mostly led to failure. Talk about preaching to the converted — I’m sure a “moderate Muslim” wants to be left alone to live his life the same as we all do. That’s nice, but it’s no help at all in any kind of war — of ideas, of guns and bombs, of anything. All this nicey-nice talk (as a ultra-liberal professor of mine used to say) does for us is make us feel warm and fuzzy, and we are already too inclined to indulge ourselves in this manner.

Update: Canadians are coming through. (Incidentally, Canadians have become the current unlikely canary in the coal mine for free speech, vis-á-vis Muslims and their unwillingness — not inability, unwillingness — to take any kind of criticism. I’ve been remiss in following the whole Mark Steyn & Co. vs. the Human Rights Kangaroo Court brouhaha going on up in the Great White North. Kathy Shaidle, who has to live there for some reason, has been following the whole thing.)

Think that might start the Big One? Sorry, all you normal people who live in the San Francisco area, but I think of things like this whenever I see one of these spectacles.

(Via Tim Blair.)

In addition: apropos, I do think. As I said on Tim’s post — remember when even Sixties protest music had standards? And how many of those protesters featured on Zombietime.com looked like dried up old hobos? Here in my nabe there’s a woman who occasionally appears at bus stops — she never gets on the bus, she just hangs out at them. Anyway, her hair is a matted lump of crust that has not been any where near a comb — or shampoo, or de-lousing ointment — in what must be at least ten years. I’ll bet you she blames Bush, Cheney, and Halliburton for whatever her problem is.

Owen Wilson does kind of look like a llama.

(Via.)

Also: I’m having another fundraiser! I know you’re into it.

Today’s weather report in Central Florida is as follows:

Partly cloudy and windy. High 64F. Winds W at 25 to 35 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.

That’s from weather.com for my zip code. Right now (12:36 PM) it’s 64 degrees. Yup, it’s the high! It’s sunny and windy, a gorgeous day. It’s going to drop to about 40F tonight. Yep, Florida’s going to be inundated by rising seas any minute now. Was that a flying penguin I just saw or a flying pig?

You know, I don’t think John C. Wright liked the movie Jumper very much.

The book sounds like a bit of entertaining juvenile fiction, though. The movie’s “creators” (for want of a better word) seem to have done to the book what was recently done, movie-wise, to one of the favorite books of my adolescense, The Dark Is Rising. In case you didn’t know, and don’t want to click on that link, the people who got hold of Susan Cooper’s fantasy novel basically gutted it, for one thing turning the very British main character into an American kid for no good reason — did they think American kids wouldn’t be able to “identify with” (there’s a phrase the use of which should be made a capital crime) a British character? Probably — which only proves the theory that Hollywood (or Hollowwood, as my fingers keep wanting to type) is not so much out of touch with their American audience as they are with the population of Planet Earth, and perhaps all of reality all together.