I have made no secret of the fact that I majorly dislike Quinto and have been avoiding going to see the new Trek movie because of it. I don't care how much he looks like Spock or how good the movie is, the guy gives me the creeps.

And then this morning I found out it's partly based on my favourite Trek novel ever, and Karl Urban is an awesome Leonard McCoy, in spite of lacking DeForrest Kelley's beautiful blue eyes. 

I spent the entire rest of the day obsessing over the movie *facepalm* Way to go, self.

 

So, because I'm not feeling so great today, I was watching daytime TV to distract myself and discovered Days of Our Lives. This is the funniest shit I've ever seen. Seriously. It's like badfic on crack. They have a "serial killer" running around in a hockey mask and everyone's all tense only they're such poor actors that it's laughable rather than concerning. I'm literally cracking up. I thought it was a parody at first, but apparently they're serious o_O

So much lulz.

So, I'm here again because I have to fangirl over The Scarlet Pimpernel. Honestly. In my defense, this is only partly because Richard E. Grant is gorgeous in seventeeth century dress (and you know if I'm saying that he must be, because I really don't do the fangirl thing that often...I swear! There are way more rants than raves in this LJ alone, that has to count for something XD). The main reason I love it is because it - is - fucking - hilarious.

I'm the first to admit that the acting - well, it sort of sucks. I really like Elizabeth McGovern (I think that's her name?) - she was in The House of Mirth as well, and she has such a nice face, odd as that sounds - but she can't really act very well. The scene in the jail where (mild spoiler) she confesses to betraying him and he's all, "ZOMG, My Looove, there's nothing to forgive" (I'm sorry, I'm cracking up here...this totally killed me); yes, not so well done. And ew, eating-face-kissing = NOT a turn on. Still, DRAMADRAMA! And the book, I loved it. Because although Marguerite is, sadly, an idiotic twit without a feminist bone in her fainting body, she nevertheless is brave and the idea of husband and wife overcoming their contempt for each other to find lasting happiness? For some reason it turns me into a squeeing fangirly person. Seriously; I adored The Painted Veil for this very reason. It's slightly embarassing, but there you are.

I did have nitpicks, though. Firstly, CANON! WHERE ART THOU? Because Marguerite did not end up in La Force in the book. She was captured and used as a hostage, and poor Percy has a BRAIN, unlike his wife - he was not strutting around wearing the stupid flower all over his stupid coat. IN FRANCE. DURING THE REVOLUTION. WHEN THEY WERE HUNTING FOR HIM EVERYWHERE. PLEASE. Le French, they are not being dumb. They sees what he does there, m'kay? Nor did he get captured. He was nearly captured. Once. And the other time he was captured he was in disguise, so nobody actually knew it at the time. Which reminds me - where were the disguises?! I wanted my disguises! Although, I kid you not, the scene where he removes the mini dagger from the heel of his shoe? Priceless. Delicious. I nearly suffocated laughing. But yes. Disguises next episode, s'il vous plait. Also, not so much with the obviousness, oui? Pimpernel is supposed to be clever. His identity is supposed to be a secret. In light of this, I believe he would take pains to make sure he is not recognized and that his followers do not yell out his real name in crowded streets, non?

Exactement.

All right, I shall cease tormenting you with my terrible French and my delirious rants. But seriously. Read the book. It's not exactly well-written, but it's a fun story. Which reminds me. I have The Three Musketeers on my shelf waiting to be read...

Since Mat asked - and since I'm awake, and all, after my stupid browser ate the first version - here is the second part of my charming story about the unicorns.
( They're coming to take me away, Ha Ha! )

I hope you enjoyed my agonizing little journey down memory lane. I sure as hell had fun XD

Honestly, there are some days when I just want to kick people in the shins and tell them to stop being so goddamn stupid.

I get it, OK? Domestic violence is a big problem, and not just in New Zealand. It would be wonderful if we could stop it. Rape, assault, murder...all of these violent things are terrible and in an ideal world would not exist.

But come on. "MATE! STAND UP AND SHOW YOU'RE AGAINST VIOLENCE TOWARDS WOMEN" =/= a good slogan for an anti-domestic violence ad.

It...just...EURGH.

1. Why is this directed towards men? Yes, male violence towards women is more frequent than the other way around, but that still happens. Classifying domestic violence as male-to-female violence is stupid and adds to the pressures which prevent male victims from speaking out, since it sends the implied message that being abused in a relationship is "feminine," "weak" and/or "girly." While I think the association of femininity with weakness is a load of bullshit, I don't make the culture.

2. This. Is not. A fucking MACHO contest. It should not be addressed to one segment of the population or the other. IT IS A PROBLEM FOR EVERYONE. Narrowing it down like this sends the wrong message. While I appreciate that they're trying to emphasize that a Real Man doesn't use violence, the message would be more effective if they just came right out and said it. Or do men go around bragging to each other that they don't hit their wives/gfs/significant others?

3. It also perpetuates the stereotype of the helpless woman needing men to agree not to hurt her/to protect her/whatever. Once again, we're relegated to the passive non-combatants position. FUCK THAT, I say. I don't need to be protected, I need to be respected. There's a difference, and the sooner people learn that and start spreading the *right* message - namely, to respect others - then the sooner they might start actually making a difference.

4. And one last thing. This may be just a personal thing, but I HATE the word "mate" when it's used by someone I've never met, OK? I don't care if I'm not your target demographic, I have to read it and it pisses me off, and it's so bloody condescending! The buddy-buddy approach = fail. Try something new before I lose my mind.

Note to self: try to ignore posters in the library in future.

I've just hit 45k and I'm taking a break from my novel to spork a very old, very funny and very sparkly original novel of mine written some 8 years ago (I was 13, FYI). It was based, if I recall correctly, on the tween series known as Diadem, the premise of which was, oddly enough, a bunch of different teens from different worlds who are called together to save the multiverse via some magical gems. Unlike my "novel," Diadem was actually good and made a lot of sense. Except for the talking unicorns. Them, not so much.

Dear Virus;
Why did you have to turn up on Friday? I didn't have an exam on Friday. If you're going to infect the school and shut everything down, the least you could do is turn up when it will get me out of my exams, goddammit. I mean, I'm sorry everyone got sick and all, and I'm glad it wasn't serious. But FFS, if you had to do it, why not when it would actually give me a break?
No love,
~tired student

------------------

Dear Self;
Not long to go now. You'll have earned your break 10x over once all this is through, so hang in there. The end is in sight. So stop being so hard on yourself - you understand this stuff. You'll do great. And please, try to keep your hypochondria in check. You will be fine. Honest.
Love you,
~me

------------------

Dear NaNo;
STFU, I'm busy.
Frustration,
~me

Dear Paper Coordinator;

PleasepleasepleasepleasePLEASE can I have some good questions on Tuesday? I've worked ever so hard every day on memorizing this stuff. I haven't watched TV in a week and my only form of entertainment has been music. Do you even know how torturous that is to me? I've even given up on NaNo, and I was SO looking forward to it this year.

I really think I deserve a break. So how's about some questions I can answer, hm?

Some love,
~your student

------------------------------

Dear Israel/Palestine textbook;

Could you be a LITTLE less boring? I have to finish these readings by the end of the weekend so I can study for the exam next week (I'm already running late) and it doesn't help that my eyes keep glazing over every two paragraphs. I do have some interest in the topic but you just keep repeating yourself and eventually I lose the plot altogether. It is NOT cool.

Frustration,
~a reader

------------------------------

Dear Self;

Stop poking yourself to see if it hurts, you moron. OF COURSE IT DOES. You're bruising yourself. God, how stupid can you get? Also, this really is not the time for a paranoid hypochondriacal meltdown. You have work to do. Worry about getting the black plague/cancer/AIDS/whatever later, when you're enjoying your YEAR-LONG VACATION.

Which you wont get, if you don't get your ass into gear.

Love,
~yourself

Dear Logic Professor(s);

YOU SUCK. Seriously.

You give us so many trick questions I am now paranoid about every move I make, not sure whether the question is real or not. Don't you get it? I'm new at this. I need questions which build my confidence, not make me think I'm going insane!

Plus, dude, the textbook sucks and finding out you did something wrong without realizing AFTER you've sent your assignment in, because you weren't sure whether two TOTALLY EQUIVALENT sentences really ought to be but didn't know the rule because it was in the wrong place and you didn't see it?!

Yeah, not so fun.

In English, "not possible" = "impossible". Make it a little clearer whether we should have a new predicate for impossible or not, would you? Now I think I screwed my entire assignment up and I want to cry, and this is NOT the first time.

Please, take pity on my nerves and STOP SCREWING WITH MY HEAD. I HAVE ENOUGH TO DEAL WITH ALREADY.

No love,
~your most frustrated student

-----------------------------

Dear Self;

Please try harder NOT to fangirl over Supernatural. God. You are so embarassing.

Love,
~your more mature alter ego

-----------------------------

Dear Life;

WTF? I hate you.

No love,
~me

Today I turned in my final assignments for the year. To celebrate, I thought I would trawl the Stargate SG-1 section of fanfiction.net and find something juicy to snark on.

We all know by now how this sort of thing inevitably ends, but I thought I'd seen the worst they could do. I thought I was prepared.

( God help me, I had no idea. )

I'm happy to read good slash-fic on occasion (although I must say I think this particular pairing would take some doing to get right), but I swear to god, that fic? That must be what hell is like. Everything is so perfect, and yet...so wrong DX

So I took the liberty of revising the ending for the author:

General Jack O'Neill woke with a start to find himself staring at the ceiling of his home. He had been dreaming - it was more like a nightmare, actually. Something about him and Daniel being married, and having triplets? The General gave his head a sharp shake, and repressed a shudder.

Perhaps Carter was right, and there really was such thing as too much cake. He eyed the empty plate on his bedside cabinet with suspicion, then carefully picked it up by the edge and dropped it neatly into the waste paper bin. He really did not need to have dreams like that again. Ever.

Dear Government Bureaucrats,

I do not typically complain about the way you do things, but now I'm getting really fed up. You have been harassing me all year about enrolling to vote, with your stupid orange forms and your scary-looking blob-person mascot. Yeah, I don't even know what that's about. But anyway, I just wanted to point out that I HAVE FILLED IN EVERY FORM YOU SENT. AND SENT IT BACK. Every. Single. Time.

I must be one of the most-enrolled citizens in the country, since for some reason you keep insisting that I enrol again every few weeks. As for your last letter, telling me "it has come to your attention" that I am not enrolled to vote and that I am "legally required" to do so? Seriously, FUCK YOU. I AM ENROLLED TO VOTE. I HAVE ENROLLED TO VOTE SEVERAL ZILLION TIMES! You obviously have my address - why must I keep telling you who I am and where I live? Do you have severe short-term memory loss? Do you even have a BRAIN? Oh wait, I forgot. This is the government I'm talking about. My bad.

Government or not, though, I swear to you, if I can't vote in November someone is going to get a big fat kick up the ass for this crap.

I mean it.

No love,
~ A Pissed Off Citizen Who Would Really Like to Vote on Election Day

---------------------------------

Dear Self,

You are a complete moron. Thanks to your stupidity in not double-checking the assignment instructions, we now have to rewrite the entire essay. Which means we have to get an extension. I am very disappointed in you - you were TRYING to get through this final semester without needing an extension at all! Not to mention I was so pleased that I was finally finished the fucking thing. And now I have to do it all over again. FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK.

Also: go get some fucking panadol. I have a massive headache and it's pissing me off even further.

No kings,
~ Your Inner Critic

OK, this is going to be a fairly difficult critique, because in this case I really did enjoy the movie. Honest. But at the same time, I found it disturbing on so many levels.

( Memoirs of a Geisha )

Overall Rating: 6/10

Because in spite of all that, I kind of liked it. The atmosphere was excellent, the culture interesting, the plot - in spite of the squick - rather compelling. And some of the cinematography was absolutely stunning. A good *movie*, but perhaps not a good *story*. Still worth a watch.

Yeah, so. A friend and I were surfing the internet for movie reviews and we came across this uber-Christian website. The reviews are hilarious - penalties are invoked for things such as leg and/or skin exposure, "dressing to maximize the female form" and other odd-sounding and somewhat old-fashioned sins.

( And then there are the metaphors... )

WTF? Seriously, WTF??????

There are not enough question marks in the world for my appalled state of mind right now. I mean, Freaky Friday was one thing. It was, at the time, fairly original and entertaining. The movie was less so, but whatever.

Then there was Big, and 13 Going on 30, and numerous other variations I either don't know of or can't remember. As time went on, the idea sort of became stupider and stupider.

Now, there's Airhead.

No, I am not kidding. It's a slight variation, insofar as it's an actual brain transplant rather than just a body-switch, but...Oh my freaking GOD.

Stupidity, my friends, has reached new heights.

( A book to make you lose your mind. Literally. )

Anyway, the basic point, I think, is that I do NOT expect crap like this in my realistic fiction. Science fiction, maybe. Fantasy, even. But not realistic fiction. I was expecting a nice, fluffy novel about a geek and a supermodel becoming friends. Possibly a makeover, a few dating tips, and a stupidly cliche romance.

I am not amused.

OK, so, I've been on a Stargate SG-1 binge lately. I loved it when I was a kid and so I've been working my way through from the beginning, catching up on the eps I missed (which was, like, 90% since we didn't have a TV at the time). Most of them have been good, or great. Some were so-so.

One, I hated.

I mean, seriously. I really didn't enjoy it.

Guess why.

( It's your Birthright to wear Very Little Armour, Honey. )
Overall Rating: 1/10.

Yeah, OK, so it's an old movie and I really shouldn't have expected much. God knows I found Dirty Dancing and its sequel to be rather trying. But even knowing it was produced before I was born (though not long before - I feel old now) I wasn't expecting it to be quite so...eurgh.

OK, so, firstly what bothered me was the dancing. It was not interesting. It was not graceful. It did not suck you in and make you want to move, the way good dance movies must. The few scenes involving ballet dancers (who did not include the MC, Alexandra) and ice skaters were a relief because they could actually move and were dancing/skating for beauty rather than - to put it frankly - sex. Seriously. We are introduced to Alex doing a dance that is, to all intents and purposes, a strip tease, which never bodes well. I'm not as prudish as I used to be, but there are limits to what I'm willing to watch, you know?

Anyway, secondly, well - there was just no...colour. I mean that literally as well as figuratively. They were all dressed in browns and greys and the movie was dull in that odd way that eighties films are, and it was...depressing *wrinkles her nose*

The other thing that had no colour was the relationship between the protagonists. It was entirely based on sex. Not that they went around having sex every other second; rather, He was attracted to Her on the basis of said strip-tease-dance, while She was horrible -- very pretty, with terrible hair but a lovely face, and acted all innocent, but at the same time everything She did was twisted to have a sexual motive. Even the way She ate her freaking lobster >.< It was actually a little disturbing. At the point where She had an ugly confrontation with His snarky ex-wife, took off her jacket and revealed that She was wearing very little underneath, then said smugly to the ex that she "fucked his brains out" on their first date...yeah, I had to turn it off.

I'm not quite sure why it unsettled me so much. I typically quite like strong female protagonists and don't especially mind when people throw their sexuality around - to an extent, anyway. But this one felt...well, embarrassing. She wasn't strong, she was demented. She threw a freaking rock through the guy's window when she thought he was seeing someone else, for crying out loud! She couldn't dance, he was ugly and a drip (seriously, NO personality whatever) and the storyline was tired and predictable without even some good music to give it some spark of life.

It was (of course) the sexism that really got to me, though. Alexandra seemed like a bright young thing and despite the whole inability-to-dance and strip-tease thing she seemed (at first) to have a handle on herself and where she was going in life. She didn't allow the stares and drool to affect her sense of personal integrity or her spirit, and she didn't take any nonsense (at least, that is what I think they intended to show with that scene where she poured beer down a heckler's pants...).

Then she met Him. He is such a non-entity that I can't even remember his freaking name, but He was her boss and He liked her dance. He followed her around after that like a love-sick puppy (excruciating in itself) and despite the token "I don't think I should date a co-worker, let alone my boss" resistance she allows herself to be romanced and blah blah blah. Her life and the lives of her fellow dancers/waitresses appear to revolve around men. One of them keeps complaining about a mysterious "he" never calling her back, and becomes all paranoid about it on a regular basis; another, Jeanie, is defined only by three things - her skating, her horrible father (who loves her "more than any thing else"), and her love for the cook/comedian whose name I also can't remember. Alexandra soon proved to have no spine except where men were concerned and...yeah. It was just ugh.

I am living proof that education is not always a good thing. Why? Because for some reason, I cannot seem to stop psychoanalysing every book I read and every TV show I watch *headdesk* To give a perfect example (and because I want to rant about this anyway), let's take the episode of Stargate Atlantis I just finished watching...

( Sanctuary )

Overall Rating: 2.69 out of 10

Since Eragon ended up being too boring to bother with, I'm going to write about something that really gets my dander up: internet trading. I do a lot of this - or rather, I deal with a lot of the emails regarding this for my parents - and there are several things both buyers and sellers do that get up my nose. So I'm going to rant about them occasionally. And not just rant (because that would be whiny and have no constructive value). No, I'm also going to offer tips on how to avoid pissing me off several common mistakes, which is always a handy thing to know.

Today's lesson: ( How Not to Handle Complaints )

Zut! Here endeth the lesson ;)

Hiya, I'm another first-timer here so I hope I'm doing this right o_o If I break any rules or what-not let me know and the error(s) will be attended to ASAP.

For some inexplicable reason, I decided to go trawling the Artemis Fowl section of FF.net this morning. This is what I found.

TITLE: How to tell him
AUTHOR: Bluesparks
SUMMARY: Holly has a secret...

( Yeah. I should have known, right? )

Aaand that's where it leaves off. Thank God.

This whole thing is made of DO NOT WANT *flails*

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