Twisted Spinster

Dude! Because evil is more fun!

(Via.)

Charles Austin points out the main reason why I have no interest in ever seeing M. Night Shyamalan’s newest movie, The Happening: the extremely irritating emphasis in its adverts on the fact that it’s his “first R-rated movie OMG!” My response to this is, “So?” Since I can’t see what’s so scary about the actual movie itself, at least based on the trailers, I can only assume that its R-rating is, as Charles says, just a marketing ploy, and that in order to get it they probably just added a couple of extra blood-bags and maybe a shot of some girl’s tits to the final release.

Update: okay, having read the reviews, apparently they blood-bags are the ratings-getter. Oh yeah, and the cause? Can you say Revenge of the Killer Weeds? I knew you could. Oh I’m sorry, did I spoil it? My bad. Consider it my little service to those who might otherwise have been compelled to spend their hard-earned dough in the theaters on this. You should instead maybe go see the latest Hulk movie, which I don’t have to spoil, because everyone knows the plots of all Hulk stories: Hulk smash! Hulk — I mean Banner — kiss pretty girl! Hulk fight and smash some more! Hulk win! Banner runs away to smash another day… This past week the Scifi channel had the old Hulk series on, and I tried to watch it, even though it had never been my particular favorite (I never really liked superhero comics anyway), but I just couldn’t, even though one of the episodes had a young, pre-Sherlock-Holmes Jeremy Brett as the villain. 1970s tv was so cheesy.

Big Trouble in Little China is the greatest movie EVER MADE.

Don’t argue with me.

Hey, I’m Grammar Bitch, not Grammar Trying-To-Be-Nice-About-It… Anyway, a common (because little known and thus little corrected) grammar mistake once more crops up: the use of “discreet” (which means “maintaining silence about something of a delicate nature” — def. further here) when what is meant is “discrete” (a word that means “apart or detached from others; separate; distinct“). Now, since the words are spelled almost the same, I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt (especially since the blogger in question is a Real Writer and so one assumes actually knows which word is which) and put this down to a simple typo, but it still drives me nuts, and makes me wish that people would just use one of the handy other words that mean the same thing. That’s what English does best — it provides us with choice, wonderful choice: multiple words for single concepts.

Speaking of failure to take advantage of our mother tongue, I hereby accuse the current run of Doctor Who of abusing the word “clever.” The show’s writers seem to think the word is just about the only one that exists to describe genius-level intelligence, when in fact “clever” is only supposed to refer to someone who is simply brighter than average. (A full definition can be found here.) In fact, a certain level of canniness — or “street-wised-ness,” if you will — is implied in the definition of clever, and it’s common knowledge that genius-level intelligence does not necessarily include this component. Many geniuses are in fact quite “unworldly,” to put it discreetly (heh), and the stereotype of the nutty professor didn’t come out of nowhere.

Also, the show undercuts its conception of geniuses as being “clever” in just about every episode that features a character that is supposed to be smart (in other words, just about every show), because invariably the “genius” in the episode does something, or a number of somethings, that no truly clever person would attempt. For example, in the two-parter “The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky” Luke Rattigan, the child genius character, rants about how much more “clever” he is than everyone else in a scene wherein he has just revealed that he has in fact been completely stupid about how his protegés would react to his bizarre plans. (On a side note, a drinking game on how often the word “clever” appears in these episodes would cause liver failure — I was almost surprised that the the Doctor referred to Luke’s school as a school for “geniuses” instead of “clever people.”) And the Doctor’s own grasp on common sense (which no true clever person can be without) often seems shaky, though he could be excused since he is, after all, an alien, and common sense for him might not be quite that of other people. But really, someone needs to send a memo to the writing staff of Doctor Who to let them know that words and phrases such as “smart” and “intelligent” are still at use among English speakers and they aren’t too difficult for the kiddies who watch the show to grasp, though I don’t know about the writers themselves.

“Clever” shows up on the episode I saw tonight, “The Unicorn and the Wasp,” though only once, I believe, so I don’t have to time my wine sips. Harder to accept is the assertion that Agatha Christie is apparently the greatest British mystery writer of all time, though I can accept she’s one of the most popular, and I can even believe that her works will last for ages beyond her time, though maybe not to the year 5 billion. Personally, though I enjoyed her books when I read them, I only read them once or at most twice. To tell the truth her stories left me a bit cold. On the other hand, I’ve read the mystery novels of her contemporary, Dorothy Sayers, countless times. But that’s just me. I have the feeling that Ms. Sayers’ works are rather beyond the folks who write for the BBC these days, and also she might be too uncomfortably theological for Mr. Davies and crew (in lieu of spoilers let’s just say it’s no surprise who is the most dastardly character in tonight’s episode).

Still, “The Unicorn and the Wasp” wasn’t bad, serving as a bit of fun fluff between the more serious eps of “The Doctor’s Daughter” (review coming up some day) and the following episode which is set on my dream planet (a giant haunted library — awesome, can’t wait, etc.). Fenella Woolgar (sp? too lazy to check names) was suitably homely/smart as the Agatha Christie, and all the other characters conformed completely to the British drawing room murder mystery as intended. The stuff about “we’re British, we carry on” got really tiresome, mostly because I don’t feel it’s a sentiment worth mocking as apparently the show’s writers and directors do, but I liked the way Donna — unlike all his other companions, at least in this incarnation of the series — ignored the Doctor’s admonishments to not attempt the slang of the time and stubbornly kept on using it.

More coming up! Including a review of “The Doctor’s Daughter,” which I am sure you are all (all three of you) waiting for with bated breath.

There’s another Starbucks controversy a-brewin’. Oh, that’s bad, I know. Anyway, it surprises me that drinking Starbucks coffee is still considered an activity that confers status in New York City, of all places. Here in little old Orlando Starbucks is just considered a chain, where the lumpenprole congregate. Well, the average office worker, anyway. To find the pretentious crowd you have to go to one of our several independent coffee houses.

As for me, I drink Starbucks on those occasions when I feel like (and can afford) a fancy drink, like a vanilla latte or something. And also they occasionally have cool mugs. But otherwise I drink coffee at home.

I’ve been suffering through a lovely bout of what feels like dysentery all day, so everything I was going to post over the weekend will have to wait for a while. Back tomorrow, or so I hope. Now, Three Dog Night will sing to you.

You can tell that the episode “The Doctor’s Daughter” was written by a man: bougainvillea doesn’t have a scent.

I’ll post a full review sometime this weekend.

Before I clicked on the link, I knew that this load of puling mush had been written by Mark Morford.

Another day, another lack of dollars… I went through some more junk that I had packed without bothering to go through before I moved, and I found my old passport. Damn I was skinny. And that shirt — OMG, I had so many tacky shirts in 1981. I’d had them since the 70’s; they were all of that fake silk “Qiana” stuff; I wore them with jeans. Anyway, you can see by my face that I was really skinny back then. Sigh. Maybe I’ll scan the photo and upload it before I send off the old passport so I can get my new one. (Yes, I still plan to get a new passport before the year is out and go to Europe before the place completely succumbs to Mohammedanism. Somehow…)

Oh by the way, some of my readers mentioned the version of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew with John Cleese playing Petruchio. Well, kiddies, guess what I got in the mail from Netflix… I also have the BBC version of Hamlet from 1980 starring Derek Jacobi, which is so far my favorite version. So I have things to watch. See you later.

I just got off the phone with the post office. I went to my mailbox today and saw what I thought was my free gummint money (ie, my “economic stimulus payment” from the IRS). Well, it turned out to be another person’s check entirely. For some reason my forwarding mail address label got slapped on this guy’s check. Questions of whether or not it’s a good thing to depend on government money aside, I really was looking forward to that cash (I have bills to pay and still no job). There’s no way to track whether or not my own check was sent to the right address — with my luck I’m guessing not, and it will take ages to make the trek through the bowels of the postal service before it gets into my hot little hands. So my economy remains unstimulated.