Daps

IMDB Best Of 2005 Poll

2006-01-04T10:37:14Z

Wow, the Harry Potter fans have really done a number on this poll!

http://www.imdb.com/features/rto/2006/poll/bestresults

As things stand Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire is the seventh best animated movie of the year, the fourth best documentary, the second best independent film, and the second best foreign language film. Even funnier than all of those is Rupert Grint as the second best supporting actor. *g*

Aside from that, Serenity is currently in the top 10 for best picture, funniest movie, most entertaining, and best action movie. Nathan Fillion and Summer Glau are in the top 10 for best actor and actress, Adam Baldwin is for best supporting actor, and of course Joss Whedon is for best director.

You can vote at http://www.imdb.com/features/rto/2006/poll/bestof2005

My Year In Movies

2006-01-01T17:46:02Z

My Top 20 Movies Of 2005

1) Serenity

A hands down winner really, though that does take into account my personal bias of just loving everything Joss Whedon writes or directs. But even without those biases I still think it would be the movie of the year. Engaging from start to finish, really well plotted, lines that had myself and the entire audience in the theatre cracking up, a really wonderful ability to play satire off the entire sci-fi genre and yet still work brilliantly as a sci-fi movie itself, the acting was all top rate, and just everything about it was exactly what a movie should be. It was great fun, it took me through all the emotions, and left me feeling like I'd seen something pretty special at the end, even after the third viewing. Just a masterpiece, and one of the best movies I've ever seen.

2) Sin City

The look of the movie is what really makes it of course, and it really is a breathtakingly beautiful movie appearance-wise. It looks like nothing I've ever seen before, and kept me mezmerised throughout. And although the look alone would probably have had me give the movie high marks, I really enjoyed the stories involved, the violence (objectively it was probably excessive and overly graphic, but I can't deny that I really, really enjoyed it), the amazing pace of the plot where it feels they don't even rest for a second to take a breather - the action and plot are developing literally non-stop, and after 2 hours it leaves you feeling exhausted at the end. I've never really seen a movie like it before, and may never see another like it. I just loved it.

3) Crash

(I'm counting this here even though it's listed on IMDB as a 2004 movie because every list I've seen from critics are also all counting this as a 2005 movie, and I believe it'll be eligible for the upcoming Oscars.) It has a brilliant script, brilliant acting, makes really wonderful use of score - it's all just brilliant. The way the movie intertwines so many different story threads, each of which deals with racism in very real and different ways. It really hits hard emotionally, parts of it are unbelievably sad, while parts of it are full of hope. It doesn't preach at all, rather it just offers all of these different stories about racism and allows us to take from it what we will. But it definitely does show how much racism is effecting the lives of so many everyday people (obviously it's a fictional account, but none of the characters are in any way unbelievable, we can believe that each of them exists), and does so in the most powerful and effective way possible.

4) Batman Begins

Easily the best Batman film ever in my opinion. Christian Bale is really great in it, especially with the first half of the movie which is pure character development and could have easily become frustrating or boring had it not been done so well. It also had an incredible darkness which suits the franchise perfectly; Cillian Murphy was really legitimately scary, there were moments of real bleakness in the portrayal of Gotham City, and not once did it get silly in the way I believe all previous Batman movies have. Really great stuff, and I can't wait to see what they do next.

5) The Constant Gardener

Rachel Wiesz is just brilliant here as the activist trying to take on the big pharmaceutical companies, and Ralph Fiennes is really great as her husband who's development the movie is really about, as he goes from a kind of weak diplomat whose heart is in the right place but doesn't really have the courage to take stands publicly against the powerful and risk his career or even his life, until he learns more about his wife and her life, falls in love with her more, and gets inspired by her to take a stand himself. Really great political thriller with an important message, a gripping story, really effective use of flashbacks to tell the story, and just incredible acting. Really great movie.

6) Cinderella Man

This seemed to be released at the wrong time of the year because it really doesn't seem to have a lot of buzz right now, but it really deserves it. Russell Crowe is as great in this as he always is as boxer Jim Braddock whose career seems to come to an end and he suffers through the great depression trying and struggling to make ends meet for his family. The difficulty of family life in those times is brilliantly portrayed, and you are really, really rooting for Braddock to succeed. The boxing sequences are all really terrific as well, especially the final one which was incredibly gripping, and really made me feel like I was there. Really brilliant, engaging film, that really had me rooting for the main character and feeling involved in his struggle.

7) Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire

For me easily the best of the Harry Potter movies - really dark where it needed to be, and really fun where it needed to be as well. Daniel Radcliffe gave his best and most mature performance yet, and there were some great performances from the supporting cast too. Especially worthy of praise because the movie had the same running time as the other Potter movies and yet had twice as much material to work with, so the job they did to cut half of a book away and yet keep the story cohesive, gripping, and without feeling like there was a big void in the movie must have been an incredibly difficult task but they did it wonderfully.

8) Walk The Line

Joaqin Phoenix does such an incredible job here as Johnny Cash, really getting the look and the mannerisms down. Especially impressive is the fact that he did his own singing for the part. The movie is a really great telling of Johnny Cash's rise to stardom, his struggle with drug abuse, his romance with June Carter, who Reese Witherspoon plays brilliantly, and his difficult family situation. It's a really engaging story anyway, but really the concert scenes are really what make the movie - they are so brilliantly filmed, performed, and the music is so great in them. Great movie all around, and I think Phoenix will be very deserving of the Oscar if he ends up winning it.

9) Pride & Prejudice

Much, much better than I expected it to be, and while it still fell short of the BBC mini-version for me, it was about as good a telling of the story in two hours as is possible I think. The acting was really great, especially from the supporting cast (Donal Sutherland was a highlight for me), and the cinematography is especially great, with some really, really beautiful shots throughout. Not all of it was perfect; I found Keira Knightley's Lizzie a little too giggly and perky at times, and Matthew MacFadyen's Darcy was ruined for me by the fact that Colin Firth did an absolutely perfect job 10 years earlier and set the bar too high. The final scene was bad as well, but those things couldn't take away from what a wonderful movie this was overall.

10) King Kong

The criticisms of the movie are all fair - it probably does go on too long, the first hour isn't really necessary, they do dwell too long on some of the big special-effects heavy scenes, and yet I didn't care at all - I loved this movie from start to finish. Even the stuff that was essentially window dressing was wonderful window dressing, and thought 190 minutes is an incredibly long time to sit through any movie, not once did I find myself bored or restless or looking at my watch. It was thoroughly engaging, moving, scary, and just wonderful overall. Everything with King Kong and Naomi Watts together especially was effective, and I was very, very close to tears towards the end. And of course the special effects were outstanding - the dinosaurs were awesome, but the scenes with all the creepy bugs and swamp creatures really, really worked, and had so much of the theatre hiding behind their hands. Great stuff.

11) The 40 Year Old Virgin
Absolutely hilarious, but also with a really good heart and a sweet side. Steve Carell is superb. Funniest movie of the year.
12) Wedding Crashers
The second funniest movie of the year, I enjoyed both the gross-out comedy and the romcom aspects of it. Romcoms, and even pretty good romcoms are a dime a dozen, but it's been AGES since I've seen a really funny gross out comedy, and this was a breath of fresh air in that regard.
13) In Her Shoes
Chick flick or not, I just loved this. Really good story, really good acting, I was really into it from start to finish.
14) Hitch
Went on a bit too long, and the end was kind of boring, but it was so funny and so charming for so much of the movie, and the dancing scene had me laughing harder than I have in the cinema in a long, long time.
15) Hostage
Really gripping thriller. Couldn't fault it.
16) The Interpreter
Really great political thriller with some very high quality acting.
17) The Island
Much better than I expected it to be. As a good, fun action flick I couldn't fault it.
18) Red Eye
First hour was so great, last 20 minutes was so laughably bad.
19) War Of The Worlds
As above, except this time there was 60 minutes of suck to follow a great first 60 minutes, instead of just 20. This would have made my Top 10 had it stayed as good as it had been for the first hour.
20) The Family Stone
Really, really enjoyable, but it just seemed kind of pointless, and it became kind of farcical in the end which ruined it for me.

Can't wait to see:
Good Night & Good Luck
Syriana
Junebug
Jarhead
Rent
Brokeback Mountain
Munich
North Country

My Least Favourite Movies Of The Year

The Legend Of Zorro (Wow, did this ever suck? And it dragged on soooo long!)
Are We There Yet? (I really should have known better.)
Kicking & Screaming (I love Will Ferrell, but man does he ever do some poor movies? This was far sillier and more lame than Elf.)
Doom

Movies that didn't do it for me, but are highly regarded

A History Of Violence

Critics have absolutely raved about this and I just don't get it at all. I didn't hate it or anything, but it was much slower and much less gripping than I thought it would be, and the violence was graphic without being in any way entertaining, Viggo Mortensen seemed pretty wooden to me and yet is getting praised for a superb job - I just didn't get it. At all. Why do people like this so much?

Wallace And Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit

I've never liked Wallace And Gromit and I don't think I ever will. It's whimsical, but that's all it is. Got very few laughs from me, or the entire theatre really, and while there was nothing offensive about it, I just plain don't understand why so many love it.

Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith

How in the world is this in the IMDB Top 250 while Serenity has dropped out? I actually quite enjoyed the movie - there were some cool effects in it and it did a good job of bridging the two movies that surround it, but there were enough bad things about it (the script and the acting) that it really can't earn much more than a relative recommendation, and yet I guess a LOT of people must have really, really loved it for it to be in the Top 250.

Statistics

Movies seen this year:

January - 55
February - 24
March - 18
April - 10
May - 16
June - 5
July - 9
August - 22
September - 8
October - 5
November - 7
December - 26

TOTAL - 206 (which is down from 380 in 2004, and 291 in 2003)
Of which I saw at the cinema - 81 (which is up from 66 last year, but down from 102 from 03)
Average price of a cinema ticket - £1.59 (I buy a monthly cinema Unlimited card and like to work out what kind of value for money I get. Pretty good I'd say!)

Current amount of movies seen ever - 1270

Happy New Year Everyone!!

Harry Potter & Narnia

2005-12-15T15:02:53Z

The Christmas spirit is completely eluding my family this year. We don't even have a tree or any decorations or anything, and probably won't have. I still really enjoy seeing lots of other people's windows all lit up though, even if we don't make the effort ourselves.

I've got back into reading BtVS and ANGEL novels lately. I find the ANGEL novels to be very consistent in having well written and interesting stories, and the characterisation is usually spot-on. The BtVS ones are less consistent, but some authors create some awesome stories. I was pleased to realise that there was an early BtVS novel by Christopher Golden that I haven't yet read (Sins Of The Father), so I'm looking forward to making a start on that. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I'm really surprised by how few people who watch the shows also read the novels. Especially now with the shows off air, I'd really have thought that lots of fans would have started to discover the novels to get their Buffyverse fix, but it really doesn't seem so. One problem with them is their lack of being canonical, and I know that shouldn't effect my enjoyment of them at all, but I can't help but be bothered that none of the things I'm reading about ever got acknowledged on the show, and sometimes eventually get contradicted. I've heard that Star Wars novels are all canonical and that George Lucas has to give approval to each one. It's a shame the same thing never happened with Joss' works, so that the books would be a true companion to the show rather than stories that exist to some extent outside of it. Still, the majority of them are well worth reading, I've found.

I saw Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire last week (weeks after everyone else saw it, I know), and found it to be by far the best Harry Potter movie ever. I enjoyed the first one a lot, and found the second one to be a step down, but then that is exactly how I found the first two books as well. The third book was miles and miles ahead of the first two, and yet the movie felt off to me and I didn't enjoy it as much as I had the first.

This one really worked for me though. I was so worried given that it was the same length as the previous movies, and yet the book was twice as long, that the massive cuts that would have to be made would have gutted the story entirely and left it barely comprehensible, but I think they did a remarkable job to cut things in a way to make the movie really work, flow well, and still cover the main and best parts of the book. Of course, a lot of things I had liked in the book had to be cut, but then I can still re-read the book whenever I want. The movies have a different job to do than the books, and I thought this was close to the very best they could do with the movie.

The only down side for me was some of the acting, but that's sort of inevitable, since when casting 11 year olds you can never tell if they are going to become good actors or not. The Phelps brothers and Rupert Grint were the worst offenders in my opinion, though it could just be my dislike of Ron's character that is clouding my opinions in Grint's case. And though I really like Emma Watson, she does seem to be trying too hard and so often ends up over-emphasising, well, the vast majority of her lines. It worked fine in the first couple of movies, because Years 7 and 8 pupils do often talk like that, but by the time people reach Year 10 they have stopped it. I think they really struck it gold with Daniel Radcliffe though, who has turned into a very good actor, and really does an amazing job carrying an entire movie on his shoulders and keeping his performances credible. The one other thing that doesn't quite work for me is Michael Gambon's Dumbledore. I can't complain too much because it can't be easy taking the place of a beloved actor who passed away, and had really made the role his own, but Gambon's Dumbledore so often sounds so harsh in comparison, and I find it quite jarring.

Those problems were not enough to drag the movie down much though. It'll probably end up being one of my top 20 movies of the year, and I definitely think it's the best Potter movie ever. I'll eagerly await the next movie, even knowing that they'll have to cut even more of that. Order Of The Phoenix is also my favourite of the books so far (though I know a lot of people consider it their least favourite, and even Rowling thinks it's too long, but I disagree with all of them :D), so I'll be even more eager to see it done well. I'll be confident if Mike Newell directs it though, after the excellent job he did with this movie.

I also saw The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobr, and found that to also be an excellent adaptation of the book. The friends who I saw the movie with were making fun of it from start to finish and didn't enjoy it even a little bit, and I guess the story (both the book and the movie) is a little simplistic, but I still think it's a lot of fun and don't really see why my friends disliked it as much as they did. Again, the child acting wasn't perfect (but unless there are four Dakota Fannings in the world, including two male ones, it's never going to be), though I really liked Anna Popplewell as Susan. The biggest problem was that Lucy's character is so young that any dialogue she has is going to seem incredibly simplistic, and I guess that can get a little tiresome after a while.

Still, the books is such a great work of imagination, and the movie was so completely faithful to it, that it's kind of hard not to like. The voice work was all really good, and stopped the talking animals from seeming in any way cheesy or silly. C.S. Lewis had said that he never wanted to see the Narnia books turned into movies or TV shows, but that was before all the recent technological advancements. I think he would have been very happy with how the movie turned out, and how Aslan came across. He was sufficiently powerful as a visual image, and Liam Neeson gave him the sort of authority and majesty that he has in the books. Best of all for me was Tilda Swinton as the White Witch. She played the role to perfection, bringing true coldness to the role during the majority of the movie, but also being completely vicious and evil during the battle scenes especially.

Overall I thought it was just a really good movie, and a really good adaptation of a book that a lot of people hold dear. The hype was out of control of course, though anything politically/religiously motivated is going to be like that. I wasn't even going to mention those elements, because I think the books and the movie work whether you're religious or not - you can take from the story what you want to take from it. Even if all the "the movie is propaganda" arguments are true, it doesn't really matter, since propaganda can still be art in my opinion, and in any case, I don't think this movie is like that at all. The themes are noticeable of course, especially if you are aware of them already, but it's nowhere near so obvious that it can't be appreciated as a story in its own right. It certainly didn't hamper my enjoyment of the movie at all.

I don't have as much to say about it as many do, and I didn't love it like many do, because I have no real emotional connection to the story. I didn't read the book until I was 20, so I never gave a single thought to Narnia as a child, I never grew up imagining it, so the movie simply had no way of working for me in the way it works for so many others. I enjoyed it a lot, but I don't really *care* about it, which is a shame I think, since it's so imaginative that it would be a really great think for a child to grow up imagining. In that way I'd put it around the same level with Charlie And The Chocolate Factory - a wonderfully created movie, that looks and sounds amazing, but which it isn't possible to *truly* appreciate unless you have some pre-existing connection to the stories that date back to your childhood.

Ok, this entry is getting long so I'll end it here. Except to mention that I really love Madonna's new song. The best she's released since probably her Ray Of Light days in my opinion. I guess it's impossible to go wrong when you use that awesome Abba sample, but still, she makes great use of it. I'm really looking forward to hearing her album now.

Veronica Mars

2005-12-08T19:08:16Z

This also contains spoilers for the alternate ending of "My Mother, The Fiend".

This season has been so terrific so far. This was yet another really great episode, continuing the excellent streak that they are on. There were a couple of things that stopped it from being quite as great as the previous few episodes though.

I felt a little cheated by the character death being Meg. Had I not heard the character death rumour beforehand, maybe I would have been a little more shocked. As I had, I found it kind of anti-climactic, since when a rumour gets hyped like that I always hope that it's a major character that dies. And one that hasn't already almost died once and spent the entire season in a coma. Storyline wise, this could be interesting, though baby storylines make me incredibly nervous because they are so often season-ruiners. The writers seem to be so overloaded with creativity though that I don't think they'd introduce this plot element unless they have a really good idea of where it's going. This isn't a desperation move like it is when a lot of other shows have baby storylines.

Having seen the alternate ending for the previous episode, and Meg's "if something happens to me" earlier in this episode, give possibly suspicion that she had something to do with Meg's death. And yet it seems as if it was just a blood clot? Either way I'm glad they didn't go with Veronica getting blamed for Meg's death.

I loved the 12 Angry Men homage. The scene with the CEO guy losing his cool and letting his racism show through was right out of that film. And though the jury returned the wrong verdict (it wasn't proven at all beyond a reasonable doubt that the two defendants were guilty), it's hard to take too much issue with guilty people going to jail. One down side is that the storyline took up a lot of time and yet didn't seem to be connected with too much else that's going on in the show. For example, I don't think that this will have much impact at all on future episodes, unless Veronica being disliked by the 09ers is an important story point in the second half of the season. It did well to showcase the racial divides that exist though, and as a self contained story it really worked for me. Of course, I loved 12 Angry Men, so it would.

The sex tapes storyline was my favourite in the episode. Logan and Keith's scenes together were terrific, and Logan crying was especially effective because almost every time we see him he bottles up his pain and expresses it all through meanness or anger. That's what makes the character so great, but also what makes it all the more effective when he shows his true emotions. The songs they used in that scene was just beautiful too. I think they have to make it more clear that Aaron Echolls conviction was not dependent on those tapes, otherwise stealing the tapes would have been an absolutely insane move from Deputy Leo. I didn't get the "man, that was stupid" feeling at all from the episode, because like many characters pointed out, enough people have seen the tape to reliably testify as to its contents. So if Aaron does end up getting acquitted solely because of the tapes being destroyed, I'll feel annoyed with this episode because in that case it would be out of character for Leo to totally sabotage a case when he could have just sold copies, or just one tape. But I don't think he did ruin the case at all, so I'm not annoyed.

Really nice moment at the end seeing Wallace again. Nothing much to say about it. It was just a very nice, happy moment. I'm really looking forward to seeing where they take his character in the second half of the season. His storylines were not very interesting in the early episodes of this season, so it was good that the character took a little break, but Veronica really needs the best friend figure around so it's really nice to see him back.

I really can't wait to see where the rest of the season goes!

I hate these long breaks shows go on in America! Over a month is way, way too long to have to wait for the next episode!

Doom

2005-12-06T22:17:10Z

Ok, so I didn't manage to do the updating every day thing. I'm really enjoying being back on LiveJournal though, so I'm not going to slip back out of it, and won't need to force myself to update every day to make sure of that. I've been really tired lately, and still am today to be honest. Partly it's the result of a messed up sleep pattern, but I also seem to be needing more sleep per night than I'm happy with.

I saw Doom last night. I'm a massive wrestling fan now, but back in 1997-1999 (before my BtVS obsession) I was *really* obsessed with it, and since those days I've been a huge fan of The Rock. Not only do I think he's incredibly talented, but I've really enjoyed his performances in the movies he's been in (even when the movies themselves have not been very good) and do think he's a genuinely good and charismatic actor. I really want his movies to do well, and I really want them to be good. So I badly wanted Doom to be a good movie. Don't get me wrong, I had no delusions of it being a potential Academy Award winner or anything, but just being great fun would have done.

Unfortunately, I think the movie took itself too seriously at times, because it wasted pretty much the entire first half of the movie with exposition. It was never a movie anyone was going to get incredibly invested in, and no one would have cared had they not explained everything in detail - we just wanted to see The Rock shooting the heck out of things and cracking funny one-liners. He was barely given any character at all in this though, and not nearly enough one liners. The other characters in the movie were all caricatures as well, and some of the performances were weak. Rosamund Pike, who I really liked as Jane in Pride And Prejudice, was especially poor. But really the acting wouldn't have mattered at all had there just been lots of fast-paced action from beginning to end, and it's a real shame there wasn't.

There was nothing especially awful about the movie - no cringe worthy moments, nothing embarrassingly stupid, it was just far too boring for far too much of the time. There was a pretty cool scene towards the end where the camera takes the look of a first person shooter, but I think the director put more thought into that one scene than into the rest of the movie combined. Really disappointing movie, and a lot less fun than it should have been. The Rock is capable of so much more, though I hear he's signed onto same lame PG Disney family movie next, so it seems that intelligent script choosing is not one of his talents.

I've seen some other movies too, better ones, but I'm way too tired to write any more now. I need sleep.

Flightplan

2005-12-03T22:54:34Z

I've been planning on seeing loads of movies in the cinema lately, but the wasting days includes not getting to the cinema when I should. Some movies I had wanted to see have gone from cinemas now, unfortunately. I'm especially disappointed to have missed Saw 2. The first one was so excellent, and I have heard that the sequel was really good too. I'll see it soon on DVD, but you really can't beat seeing movies in the cinema.

The only movie I've watched in the cinema in the last couple of weeks is Flightplan, which I really enjoyed. The psychological thriller in the claustrophobic and restrictive setting of the airplane was obviously very Hitchcock-esque, though it wasn't anything at all like Hitchcock's own 'person goes missing, no one remembers her; was she even there in the first place?' movie The Lady Vanishes. Jodie Foster was superb in it, showing such a level of desperation and anxiety that it was entirely believable whether she had actually lost her daughter or was imagining it as a coping method after recently losing her husband. Another strength of the movie is the way that Jodie Foster, and as a result the viewer, mistrust certain characters at different times throughout the movie, so until it's revealed you are kept guessing as to what is actually going on. The build up in this movie is really, really good.

Red Eye, another thriller set on a plane, and a movie I had absolutely loved for the first hour or so, descended into a complete farce for the last 20 minutes or so. Flightplan never becomes silly or ridiculous like Red Eye did, and it also stays enjoyable until the very end, but the weakness of the movie is again the payoff. The build up was so strong, with seemingly so many small pieces of a puzzle given to us as clues, and it would have been nice to have had an ending that really delivered on the build up and tied everything together. As it is, certain threads that were dangled in front of us during the movie turn out to be nothing, and when you think too hard and try to put everything together given the context of what is actually going on, the plot falls apart and has holes everywhere, with many questions remaining unanswered. Re-watching the movie would be significantly less enjoyable than watching it the first time was, because knowing what is really going on, there are things that don't make sense and don't fit.

Still, for a gripping, exciting hour and a half at the movies, I highly recommend it. It's not a movie that will stand up to repeated viewings, and obviously won't go down as one of the best movies of the year, but it's still great fun from beginning to end.

Hopefully I'll be seeing The Constant Gardener and the new Harry Potter, both of which I am incredibly excited to see!

TV stuff.

2005-12-02T23:44:27Z

Just some brief thoughts on the new TV season. (No spoilers for anything at all.)

New Shows:
Commander In Chief is my favourite new drama of the year. I'm finding Geena Davies slightly annoying, but Donald Sutherland as Templeton is terrific, and there was just no way I wasn't going to love a drama with a political setting. It's nowhere near as good as The West Wing's early season, and probably still slightly inferior to the current West Wing, but still really good. I loved the first episode of Reunion, and the premise is terrific, but it went very bad very quickly. Neither Supernatural nor Bones inspired me to watch past the first episode, though I'll give Bones another go some time because I feel guilty giving up a show that has a BtVS actor in a starring role. My favourite of all was Head Cases, of which I loved the first two episodes, and had high hopes for it becoming one of my favourite shows as the season continued. Of course, it got cancelled after just two episodes. I just don't get American audiences sometimes. I despise the networks for cancelling the shows, but they wouldn't cancel shows if millions and millions of people were watching them. I really wish mainstream taste was more in sync with my own.

Comedy wise, I absolutely love Everybody Hates Chris, and I really enjoy My Name Is Earl, but I gave up on How I Met Your Mother and Kitchen Confidential after a few episodes. I feel guilty about that too, for obvious reasons, but I laughed so few times watching them that it just wasn't worth it. The latter was especially disappointing because I really do think Nicholas Brendon is an enormously underrated and under-appreciated actor, and it would have been nice to see him in a show where he could really show how good his comedic timing is, but I guess it wasn't to be.

Returning Shows:
Veronica Mars is having an even better season this time, which is saying something. Episodes 1 and 3 were terrific. 2, 4 and 5 were mediocre, I thought, but since then the series has kicked into gear and the last run of episodes have been really high quality. Alias is having its weakest season yet I think, though it's still incredibly disappointing to hear that this season will be the last. I'm enjoying Rachel Nicholls in it, though it's a sad reminder that another really superb show, The Inside, was cancelled after so few episodes. Lost is another show that I thought had an excellent pilot, then had some mediocre episodes towards the start of the season, but has had a strong run of episodes. It's still doing some things that annoy me (like not answering loads of the unanswered questions it has posed over the past season and a half!), but I'm still looking forward to each new episode. I think Smallville is having its best start to a season yet, where as The Amazing Race is definitely having its worst season. I'm sure they realise that this family thing was a mistake (I had high hopes for it, but clearly that was foolish of me!)

I really watch way too many TV shows.

My top 5 shows of the year so far:

1) Veronica Mars
2) Smallville
3) Everybody Hates Chris
4) Lost
5) The West Wing

I just found out that if you cancel SkyPlus, you can't even watch the shows you've already recorded. That sucks! We cancelled Sky because it just wasn't worth spending such an enormous amount of money when we only watched a few shows on there. It has stopped me from catching up with the first season of Desperate Housewives which I had been watching on E4 (until I get an external hard drive and can start downloading seasons again), I have to wait a few days to watch wrestling, and I can no longer watch Without A Trace since unfortunately that doesn't seem to be a popular show among downloaders so I never see full season releases online, and I'm over a season behind. But other than that, the effect is small. Proving that spending £50 a month on it was not good value. At all.

I really hope Sky get some strong competition so that they'll have to lower prices!

waves

2005-12-01T23:50:51Z

I guess yet another attempt to get back into LiveJournal fell away. I'm sorry to have lost touch with everyone, I really have missed everyone. I really don't know why I'm so bad at it, but I really am just awful. Both in real life and online, I'm just the worst person in the world for keeping in touch. If I could change one thing about myself, that would be it. Of course, I said all this 11 months ago and completely failed (I got worse if anything) in my objective to change it. I know this is is the latest of far too many failed attempts to get back to using LiveJournal, but I'm hoping this time will be the successful one!

This time I'm not going to even attempt a big catch-up post or anything like that because it leaves me thinking that I have a lot to write, as if to make up for all the months I've not posted, and it makes LiveJournal seem like a chore. Besides, there's not a tonne to catch up with - my life is at pretty much exactly the same place it was at the last time I posted, which is both a good and a bad thing. On the good side, things are still going great with Stacey, and my trips to visit her are the highlights of my life. I have good friends, a good family, I have pretty much all the material things I need, so I'm not in a constant state of wanting much more than I have, and so on; I'm fairly satisfied. On the down side, I'm still in a state of frustration and confusion as to what I want to do with my career. I'm starting to get some ideas, but they of course have me worried as to whether they will be the right moves for me, and so on. Plus I feel as if I'm putting off growing up - still living with my parents, not being independent or self-sufficient, and obviously that has to change but I worry that I'll struggle and find it difficult when I do. Overall, I'm in exactly the same place I was a year ago, which I'm neither depressed nor enthusiastic about.

I'm going to try and post something every day this month, nothing big probably, but I really want to get back into the habit of writing, and setting myself targets for that sounds like it might help.

So what should I talk about in this entry? What did I do today? Umm. Planned on waking up at 9.30am, hoping to go to the cinema and watch a few movies. Slept through my alarm and woke up at 2pm, getting 13 hours of sleep. (What a waste of 5 hours! I only need 8 hours of sleep not to be exhausted the next day.) Watched the latest Veronica Mars, the latest Lost, the first episode of Sports Night (great stuff, I don't know why I waited so long to check this out since I really love Aaron Sorkin's writing), and a WWE Smackdown special that was completely classless and exploited a wrestler's recent death to advance a current storyline and try to make wrestling seem as if it can appeal to non-wrestling fans (it can't). Lost 36 pence playing poker with my 11 and 12 year old brothers. And that's about it. An entire day pretty much gone.

Much as I complain about how much I hate the lack of free time when I have a full time job, there is something about being out of work that just stops me from accomplishing anything. Aside from two months I did work 9-5, this has been my pattern for the year; wasting way too many days doing next to nothing. I really need to get a job soon! Otherwise I just know I'm not going to break out of this slump of not doing anything all day, taking much longer to do things than I should, waking up at ridiculously late times, and so on. I need a job to give my days some structure. The money would be nice too.

Ok, I'm going to leave it at that today. Writing LiveJournal posts after not writing for ages is so hard! So much so that it really should stop me from going ages without writing. :)

2004

2005-01-08T16:41:33Z

This will be my last post of 2004 catch-up, and though obviously two posts can't completely sum up an entire year, these are pretty much the main things that went on in my life in 2004.

Life

By far the best and most significant thing in my life is that I'm in a relationship with Stacey who I met at the Beta, started IMing with in January, started to fall for straight away, and met for the first time in June. I've since visited her again in November-December, and the times when I'm with her are the best in my life. While it's really hard having to be apart from her for so many months of the year, it's completely worth it. She's a wonderful person and a wonderful girlfriend, and I'm very happy and grateful to be with her. :)

On the less good side, I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do with my life. I don't know what career I want to follow, whether I want to do a masters or not, etc. There's something frustrating at being content with what I have at the moment (living at home with the family, not paying rent, working temp work for a couple of months at a time, and spending the money I earn on traveling) all the while knowing that it's not going to be sustainable in the long term. 2004 was definitely a year full of early-twenties uncertainty, and I see that continuing.

School

I graduated university with a 2i, which I was pleased with, and which unsurprisingly has led to nothing. All the jobs I've done so far I could have done with A-levels, or even just GCSEs, and considering I made no friends at all in university (I've not kept in touch with any of the people I used to hang out with there), I'll definitely look back at it as an experience that could and should have been a hundred times better. Still, the degree might come in handy some day down the line, I hope it will. I'd hate three entire years to be wasted.

Travelling

I travelled to America on my own twice, in June to visit Stacey (bawston48) and faithx5, which was a really excellent trip, and it was so great to spend time with people in real life that I'd got to know and like so much online, and then again in November to visit Stacey, which was of course another wonderful trip that I wish didn't have to end. It was so great being able to see some of America (politics aside, it's a country I really love, and hope to move to some day), and Jandy and Stacey were both great at showing me lots of awesome places and restaurants in their cities. :) (Though this is slightly biased since I ate out in restaurants in the States where as I don't do that back home, the food in America is sooo much better than the food back home!) I've visited Massachussetts, Missouri, Maine, Rhode Island and New Hampshire (taking my list of states visited up to 6, with Florida where I went on a family holiday to in 2002), and I can't wait to visit more states and cities in future trips to America. I really wish I'd taken more pictures the times I was there!

In those two trips some of the highlights were: watching my first baseball game in Rhode Island, taking a tour of Fenway Park, watching Meet Me In St. Louis in the outside theatre in St. Louis, going to the Gateway Arch, Six Flags St. Louis, the New England Aquarium (and ~~seeing~~ experiencing The Polar Express in IMAX 3-D), the science centres in Boston and in St. Louis, the audio tour of Boston and the great view from the 50th floor of the Prudential tower, riding the Swan Boats in the Boston public garden, and trips to Ipswich, Salem, Portsmouth, Kennebunkport, Rockport and Cambridge. Ok, I want to be back in America, like, now!

In September my friend Stephen decided he wanted to spend his 22nd Birthday in Amsterdam, so me and a few friends travelled there with him in the morning, spend the day there, and then came home in the night. It's a really interesting city, and such a massive change in culture. There is of course an enormously seedy side to the city, and just walking along the red light district and seeing prostitutes in the windows trying to lure people in, and sex shops all over the place, live sex shows, the sex museum (which really was just a massive porn collection, with no museum-ish like stuff about the history of sexual practices or anything. Hmph. Or so I've heard.) etc. But it's actually a really beautiful city, the architecture is really interesting, the canals were pretty, and the layout of the streets was neat (though made it sooo easy to get lost, I'd never have survived there on my own!) I love seeing new cities and experiencing different cultures. For a one-day trip where we didn't even stay a night, I think it was a really good experience.

Work

After graduating uni, traveling to the States, and coming back, I waited a couple of months and started to do some of the conveyor belt work at a factory that I'd done before, but this time I utterly despised it. There was a new boss there that I hated, and the days dragged a hundred times more than they used to, and I was wishing constantly that I'd get let out early and it never happened. I quit/got fired within 6 days, and am sooo glad I did! That taught me that if I'm not enjoying a job I won't be willing to keep doing it.

I started a 9-5 office job for the first time after quitting the factory job, and it was great. For one, I was in an office with four guys, two of which were school friends of mine (that's how I got the job.) Also, the work was supposedly a busy call centre job, but the calls hardly ever came in, so we'd just be able to sit around the office chatting, reading, playing Lemmings on the PC, and just answering the sporadic calls when they came in. After 5 weeks they realised that we were being paid to do essentially nothing, so the other four guys were let go and I was kept on to do menial tasks like filing and sorting and opening mail and data inputting. It was tolerable for a while, since I was able to listen to my personal CD player while doing most of those tasks, but it was still mind-numbingly dull. I stuck with that for 3 weeks, but a combination of the dullness, an upcoming trip to America, and a workmate that was driving me insane, led me to quit that job. It was nice to get my first experience of an office job/call centre though.

2004 was one of the better years I've had, and I'm hoping that 2005 will be better still. :) Ok, that should pretty much do it. I'll hopefully get started on commenting later!

A New Year

2005-01-03T23:55:44Z

It has been way, way too long!

I can't believe I've just gone an entire year and hardly updated this at all. 2004 went so quickly! Overall I'll look back at it as an excellent year, but there were some not so good things too - the biggest of which was probably how many people I lost touch with for no reason other than my own awfulness at keeping in touch with people. Even if I just updated livejournal a couple of times a month, I'd at least have still been in touch with people. The losing in touch thing has been most prevalent with livejournal friends because there are so many people on here that I've really missed posting with, and yet for some reason I wasn't able to shake off the losing touch thing all year. I think I probably promised myself every week that I'd update livejournal and try to get back in touch with people, and yet it just never happened. This has happened with some of my friends in real life as well. Not calling or emailing people back, and in no time I'm suddenly not sure what's going on in their lives, I've not seen them in ages, and yet I still don't make that call or email that I should. I apologise to everyone who I've lost touch with this year, all the emails I've not returned, "happy birthday"s I've not said, etc. I really hope I'll be able to change this about myself this year, and making this entry now seems to be the best way to ensure that I do. :)

I think it's pretty obvious what my main new year's resolution was! I actually did plan on updating on New Year's Day and then trying to update every day of this month, but after having stayed down a friend's house on New Year's Eve and then helped him and some other friends move into a house together on the 1st, I stayed over their new house on that day and couldn't get online at all. Having got back home it still managed to take me a couple of days to make an entry! *sigh*

Overall I've had a nice Christmas/New Year, and I hope you all have too! Thank you so much to littlexander, helygen, faithx5, redwitch_g, bignrichcowgirl and shebit for the cards! :) I really appreciate them.

I like looking back at journal entries to sort of re-live moments in my life, to see what I was feeling at certain times, etc. and it's a shame that I don't have LiveJournal entries to do that with from last year. I really enjoyed reading stevefarrell's Year in Review, so I think I'll do the same. Seems as good a way as any that I'll be able to remember what I was listening to, watching, etc. :)

The Year In Film

I started the year with a really massive movie addiction, where I was watching 2-4 films every day (86 films in January, 62 in February), but these sorts of numbers trailed off massively as the year went on. When I started my first 9-5 office job, I saw only 15 movies in the entire 2 months I worked there (September and October.) For some reason I developed a lack of motivation for watching movies as the year progressed, especially going to the cinema to watch them. The days of 4-cinema-movies-in-a-day disappeared completely, and I ended up with my lowest total of movies seen in the cinema in 4 years (62.) (I have way too many movie lists, and way too many statistics about my movie watching, I can see that it's a bit overly obsessive and yet I never fail to enjoy making them!)

I loved some of the movies I saw, I hated a few (but not that many), but there were tonnes and tonnes that I was pretty much indifferent to. There are a *lot* of bland movies being made.

Actually... come to think of it, I'll make a seperate post with my favourite, least favourite movies of the year. :)

The Year In Music

Getting my own PC and broadband connection in August (I had previously been using my brother's) allowed me to download loads and loads of MP3s. Starting the office job in September which included a 30 minute drive there and back (due to traffic, it was actually not that far from me) gave me a chance to make CD-RWs of some of my downloaded albums and listen to them on the way to work. Some were great, some were good enough but forgettable, and some sucked. Most significant was Bruce Springsteen, who I have not stopped listening to since. Having listened extensively to all of his studio albums, I can safely rate him as one of my 3 favourite artists of all time (along with Metallica and R.E.M.)

When it comes to live music I seem to see lots of it only every other year. In 2001 I went to the Reading festival and various other gigs. In 2002 I saw next to no live music. In 2003 I also went to Reading and a bunch of other gigs. Last year I was back to seeing next to nothing. I went to a couple of gigs in small local venues - The Crimea (who had a song off their album, White Russian Galaxy, played in the pilot episode of Wonderfalls (it was such a great shock hearing that song playing!)) were the better of the two, but Mountain Men Anonymous were also excellent.

Chart wise, while I usually try and download all the week's new chart entries so that I can keep up to date with what music is being released (I despise the radio - it always has either obnoxious DJs or commercials or both, plus it gets very repetitive and ignored a lot of good music that gets released in favour of over-playing crap), I failed to do that entirely this year, so there are tonnes of chart songs that I won't have heard. From what I have heard - I surprisingly like some of the bigger selling songs of the year. Eric Prydz' Call On Me is one of the better dance songs I've heard in a while, Mario Winans' I Don't Want To Know was good, The Streets' Dry Your Eyes, even Eamon's I Don't Want You Back grew on me (though I utterly despised the 'rebuttal'.) Of course, I would still rate the vast majority of the chart songs I heard as rubbish, but still.

Having tried to work out what my 5 favourite 2004 albums have been, I realised how many albums I didn't *love* all the way through, but loved one or two tracks on it. These are some of the albums I considered as being some of my favourites, and some of the songs I particularly like off them, but that I ruled out because there are too many tracks on them that I've not really listened to enough/didn't make a strong enough impression:

Thursday - War All The Time - (War All The Time, This Song Brought To You By A Falling Bomb)
Vanessa Carlton - Harmonium - (Who's To Say)
The Used - In Love And Death - (All That I've Got, Take It Away)
Chevelle - This Type Of Thinking (Could Do Us In) - (The Clincher, Another Know It All)
Katie Melua - Call Off The Search - (Call Off The Search, The Closest Thing To Crazy)
Avril Lavigne - Under My Skin - (Forgotten, Nobody's Home)
Snow Patrol - Final Straw (Grazed Knees, Run)
The Killers - Hot Fuss (Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine, Smile Like You Mean It, Mr Brightside)
Embrace - Out Of Nothing (Ashes, Gravity)

I really enjoyed listening to all of those albums, though I'm not ready to call any of them truly great albums. In some of their cases I'm sure it's because I've not listened to them enough times to truly appreciate them yet. I can only think of four albums from 2004 that I've loved from start to finish and that are still excellent with every listen, and they are:

The Crimea - Tragedy Rocks
Incubus - A Crow Left Of The Murder
R.E.M. - Around The Sun
Jimmy Eat World - Futures

I'm definitely not ready to make a Top 5 list of the year yet though, when some of the albums I've listened to need further listening, and some albums need listening to for the first time (I've still not heard the albums by Eminem, The Rapture, Keane, Franz Ferdinand, U2, and a bunch of others.)

The Year In TV

I started to slightly lose my interest in ANGEL towards the end of the season, and I'm still waiting to watch the final three episodes. It never got to the point where I didn't enjoy the episodes (like what happened in season 7 of BtVS), but I did stop eagerly awaiting new episodes, downloading them the moment they became available online, etc. I'm still very sad that the show got cancelled, and I really miss the Buffyverse world being on TV, but the obsession I had with the shows definitely faded into a more natural appreciation and enjoyment.
The West Wing - I think the fifth season was pretty disappointing, but I feel that the sixth season has been excellent so far. I downloaded the 6th season episodes over the past couple of weeks, and as soon as I watched one I immediately had to watch the next, and so on. I've loved every single episode. It even motivated me to download all of Season 3 and the first half of Season 4, neither of which I had previously watched. Such an absolutely brilliant show, and I can't wait for the next episodes!
The O.C. - I still absolutely love this show. Towards the start of the year, and the middle/end of the season I stopped downloading the episodes for some reason, but they were all showing on TV in November-December so I caught up on it all, finishing the first season, and realised what I'd been missing. That of course led me to start downloading the second season, and while I think it was touch and go for a moment (previous favourite characters becoming dislikeable), I think it's got back to it's former self in the last few episodes, and I again can't wait for the next ones!
Lost - I'm not sure why it was only in December that I truly got the urge to download loads of TV shows, but as a product of my very temporary TV downloading addiction, and having watched all of The O.C. and The West Wing, I started downloading this show, and I'm really enjoying it! The latest 2 or 3 episodes have been especially awesome, and bode well for the rest of the season. A show with a really interesting premise, and that has got better and better with almost every episode as the season has progressed - chalk this up as another one I can't wait to see the next episodes of!
The Amazing Race - Reality TV at its absolute best - tonnes of fun, a good amount of drama, and I love that there are teams I root for and teams I despise... it's like a cross between reality tv and sports. I only got into this show towards the very end of the year, so I've missed the first 5 seasons, but I'm glad I've finally got into it!
The Daily Show - Every episode I watched when I was in the states made me more annoyed that we don't get this show in the UK. I started downloading episodes towards the end of the year, but still, if we get Fox News we should at least get the comedy show that does a better job of presenting news than an entire news station does!

The Year In Books

I read 41 books in 2004, which is a fair amount by my standards. One of the highlights of those were the Harry Potter series which I had never previously read, but that I absolutely loved, more so with every book, and have me eagerly awaiting the next installment. I really didn't think I'd love them quite so much, but the last three books especially made me realise just what all the fuss has been about all these years and how much I'd been missing out on. Along with those, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is the best book I read all year - absolutely superb. I really enjoyed the other two Dan Brown books I read too, Angels and Demons and Digital Fortress. Other authors I've read for the first time this year and really enjoyed are John Grisham, Lawrence Block and Agatha Christie. On a non-fiction note, I absolutely loved Al Franken's Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them, and feel that 2004 would have been a much, much better year had most Americans read that book.

I'm going to cut this entry short now (partly because I want it posted before the day ends!). There is more I want to talk about, though I think this is probably enough babble for one post. :) I really hope I follow this entry up with more entries in the following days. I'm really determined to.

I'm sorry once again for having lost touch, I've really missed everyone. I'm looking forward to getting back to reading entries and posting with you all again. :)

Happy New Year to everyone! I hope 2005 is a really happy year for you all. :)

guilty smile

2004-06-26T23:00:55Z

I'm posting now because faithx5 is forcing me to. She hit me twice to make me post. Honestly! :D

I really am sorry for my massive LiveJournal absence of this year. I really miss reading everyone's posts, and I know I keep saying this, but I really do mean to get back to reading, commenting, posting, etc., and just... well, it hasn't happened (obviously :))

What are we supposed to write in these LJ post things again? *g*

Ok. At the moment I'm on a just over two week trip in America. I had a fantastic 8 days in Boston with bawston48 (who rocks soooooo much!), and am now in St. Louis until Monday, when I'll be going back to Boston, where I'll stay for a few days before flying back to Wales on July 1st. I sooooo wish I could stay out here for much longer. I'm having such a great time. :)

Hanging out with Jandy (who totally rocks for letting me stay with her, (and just totally rocks in general)) is a lot of fun. We went to Six Flags on Wednesday, which was awesome. This park is a lot better than any of the British theme parks I've been to, it had more rollercoasters, the queues weren't too bad, and it was just generally a really cool place. Of course, it was also great going to a theme park with Jandy. Who, by the way, is a heck of a lot braver than I am. I was really scared going on a bunch of the rides, where as Jandy was totally not nervous about any of them.

Going to the arch (which is amazing) was along the same lines. Going up the trams to the top of the arch frightened the life out of me, they were creaking and everything!! It's not at all unmanly of me that I was clinging to the seat and cringing for the entire 4 minute ascent. *cough* And then looking down on St. Louis, while extremely cool, was also very scary for me. But the trams up and down the arch were definitely the scariest.

Luckily, Jandy has been completely supportive of all my fears, and has reassured me of my safety at every occasion. "They don't lose too many people on here". Yup. Very reassuring. :D

I'm trying hard to keep this post really short, I just can't seem to stop myself from babbling. Plus it's been a really busy trip (my friends rock for taking me to lots of places :)), so I'd be able to go on and on and on. I'll do that when I get back home I think. :)

And I've really lost the hang of this LJ posting thing. I need help. :D

"You type stuff in the white box and then press "update journal" at the bottom." Thank you Jandy. :D

I have soooo much more I want to babble about, but I feel guilty for drawing this out so long. Also, kaymyth is here at the moment, who is also very cool. Plus I feel guilty about taking so long about this, even though Kaymyth has just assured me that it's ok for me to go on for another chapter or two if I need to. Hee! See? I'm practically being ordered to keep babbling. *g* I swear, Jandy and Kaymyth are such slave-drivers. :D

It's so strange that I've been friends for over a year with them and yet this week is the first time I've met them, and likely the only time I'll be able to spend with them for ages. It's sad. I wish I lived in America. :)

I'll babble a lot more about this trip when I get back, I expect, so I will finish up for now. I'll just say that I've really loved my time here in America so far, and Bawston, faithx5 and Kaymyth are all fantastic. :)

And now Jandy and Kaymyth are mocking my babbling tendencies. I'll stop. :D

I will post more when I get back home though. Honestly. :)

Eek!

2004-04-10T09:36:27Z

Happy Belated Birthday faithx5!!

Sorry for missing it yesterday. I suck. :( Hope you had a really great day!! :) *hugs*

Blackburn Rovers suck. *frown*

As do I for disappearing and neglecting LiveJournal so badly. I miss everyone.

As do essays.

But that's about it. Everything else is good. :)

:)

2004-04-08T20:05:57Z

Happy Birthday bawston48!!!!!! smoooooooooootch!!

I hope you're having a fantastic day, and I hope this is the beginning of a wonderful year for you. :)

daps @ 2004-03-23T03:51:00

2004-03-22T19:51:18Z

Happy Birthday stevefarrell!!!

Hope you had a really great day!!

Yay again!

2004-02-27T14:46:43Z

Checked my email, and had an email from Kaisa telling me to go to the Bronze. I have a yay day! :D This has sooo made my day!

And thank you all so much for the happy birthday wishes! I'm sorry it took me so long to thank you all. I was out all Wednesday, once I got home my drunk typing was embarrassing and not for public viewing trust me *g* and then Thursday I spent the entire day recovering from the day before and didn't feel up to, well, anything. But yeah, seeing all those messages made what was already a really good day even better. I really appreciate it, thank you. :)

Wednesday was fantastic. My best birthday ever, for sure. :) From the very first minute of turning 21 it was a wonderful day. :) In the afternoon, me and my friends met up at 1pm, drank until 12 midnight (so we fell two hours short of our 13-hour drinking target, but I was pleased with the 11 hours *g*). Between us we went through just about every cocktail that the bar did, and my brother and friends (who all soooo rock) bought all of my drinks, which made it all even better. :) My brother did a lot of drunken freestyle rapping (him and my friends are all becoming rap fans!) which was hilarious, though I'm sure most of the drunken highlights would have happened in the last couple of hours of the night. Of which I can remember absolutely nothing. *g* I've been that drunk only once before, and am absolutely determined to get that drunk never again, because the next-day-hangover was torture from the first minute to the last, but I think it was worth it for my 21st. But never again. *resolve face*

There were seven of us in the end, one of whom I'd not seen in almost a year and half, and only two people who said they'd be there weren't able to make it (calming my paranoid fear that everyone wouldn't be able to make it!), so that was nice.

We were all such typical students for the first couple of hours of the day! *g* Sitting in a pub having a two hour discussion about free will, determinism, God, politics, etc. etc. and my brother looking at us as if we're all insane. Rhys and Glyn don't believe in truth, or in right or wrong, even in time (!), or... pretty much anything. I was reduced to a few "it just is" or "there just is" answers, which Glyn took as a victory of course. :D I love those sort of discussions we all have. There always seems to be the right blend of interestingness and humour. And my friends really crack me up. :)

I'll stop babbling now, but my friends rock. :)

Thursday was... not so good. Joint worst hangover I've ever had. And it lasted the entire day. Still, my friends pointed out, and I did see their point, that feeling so completely awful on the second day of being 21 should make me feel like I celebrated my 21st properly. And it kind of did. :)

Thankfully, I'd completely recovered by this morning, though I am still behind on my sleep and almost stayed in bed instead of going to uni... but just almost, thank goodness. :) I love my French philosophy course so much. We've studied Sartre and Camus so far, and they're both so interesting. Plus the lecturer is really good. Week off uni next week (next week is going to be good *g*), which I'm really looking forward to. Among other things, it's going to give me a chance to get some essays done. I've still not done the essays that I failed to do during my essay hell a few months ago, so I'm an absolute mile behind, but I am determined to get at least a little caught up. For some of the essays, especially my omniscient God/free will one, I have some stuff gathered and all I need to do is sit down and write it. For the Nietzsche essays (yes, I now have two Nietzsche essays to do), I have nothing at all gathered and haven't even got a clue what I want to write about. Still, that's the plan for next week.

On a totally different note, I've got soooo into detective novels and TV shows again recently. It all started with bawston48 recommending The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd to me (which I still haven't been able to track down in either of my local libraries, but hopefully will get to read soon!) which reminded me how much I used to enjoy detective shows on TV. I've watched more Columbo and Poirot shows and movies in the past couple of weeks than I have other movies. Peter Falk rocks sooo much as Columbo, I just love every single second he's on screen. I've missed watching him, and am so glad I've got back into it again. The same can be said for David Suchet's Poirot. I haven't seen any other actors playing Poirot (though I do have a couple of movies SkyPlus-ed that have them), but after having finally read an Agatha Christie Poirot novel, I realised just how absolutely brilliantly Suchet translates him to the screen. Yup, detective fiction, in print and on screen, is going to become my new obsession for a little while. :)

I've seen so much positive reaction to the latest ANGEL episode. I really can't wait to see it. Have finally downloaded it, so shall watch that tomorrow I think. I've sort of lost my ANGEL fandom completely it seems. I absolutely adored Smile Time of course, but I haven't even watched the episode that came before it! Not sure why this has happened, since the quality of the show this season has been, for the most part, excellent.

I didn't get my Fantasy Angel questions in on time for the latest round. That's really disappointing, since I've really been enjoying playing it, and to get a 0 for a week is a shame (and after I'd been doing alright as well! *g*)

I've caught up with some commenting in LiveJournal today, though I do still have some catching up to do. I'm glad to have got back into LiveJournaling, I've missed it. :)

I'd really better get to bed now since I have to be up in less than six hours for work. *sigh*

Bored...

2004-02-24T03:03:39Z

This will be fairly random and pointless, I'm just updating because I haven't in a while, and I'm bored.

I started back work on the weekend. Not the end of the world: we only worked six hours per day instead of eight, and considering how easy the work is, I shouldn't be complaining. I even got 250 pages through Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders while I was working (fabulous book... and the large print edition made it easier for me to read while working, I'll get some more Agatha Christie large print from the library today I think), which is nice. But, I'll complain anyway. Even just those six hours a day leaves me feeling completely worn out for the rest of the day, and I end up needing more sleep than I would on days where I don't work.

I'm so glad I finally have a CD player in the car. I was finally able to have a good listen to the Stone Roses compilation thestage made me, and I am officially converted. Wonderful, wonderful music.

I think I might be losing my movie obsession a little. For the past few days I've had opportunities to just sit down and watch movies, and haven't done so. There is a side to me that wants to watch them just to cross them off the IMDB 250 list or add them to my movies-per-year list (Yes, I'm a total list addict), but can't seem to motivate myself to watch the movie itself. As a result, I spent all day yesterday on MSN chatting to tonnes of school friends. It was nice, and relaxing, and I hadn't done that for a while. Plus it gave me a chance to organise a day and night out tomorrow.

It's my 21st tomorrow. I was a bit worried that my procrastination and ever-decreasing organisation skills was going to result in me spending the day not doing anything, and just staying online (as I did for my 19th and 20th birthdays) but thanks to yesterday I finally managed to get something organised and there should be a decent sized group of us going out tomorrow. My friends have taken up the practice of dropping coins into the pints of whoevers birthday it is and forcing them to down them. It's things like this that make me glad to be an alcopop drinker. *g* We're meeting at 1pm, and are aiming to be out until at least 2am. I am going to be so dead. :)

As an early birthday present my parents got me a digital camera, but, somehow, I suck at taking pictures. Some of them have come out alright, but usually they seem to come out way too dark, even though the flash is on automatic and does actually flash.

I've taken one picture of Charl II, but I suck so badly at Photoshop that I can't even figure out how to make an image smaller. Like, I try and just drag the outline of the picture inwards (if that makes sense), but it ends up going over the image instead of compressing it. I know this is really basic and I have no excuse for not knowing what to do, but... help? :)

Also, they fly through batteries really badly. And I have a battery recharger here somewhere, but I can't find it. I also have about 20 rechargable batteries here somewhere that I needed for the high school gameboy Tetris league that I ran a few years ago, but can't find any of them either.

Snoop has learned how to open doors. He seriously needs to start shutting them after him. *g*

I'm glad for the lecturer's strikes in university, and I support them, but wow, they've really put me in a lazy mood. Missing two out of my four days of uni (and I'm especially grateful that they're striking tomorrow because it means my birthday is free of class. Because I'd have turned up if there was class of course. *g*) has made me feel reluctant to turn up at all this week. If Friday's lectures weren't so interesting I'd probably take the week off.

I need to go into town now. I really, really can't be bothered. I just feel like sitting around all day and doing nothing. Of course, that way lies having no batteries for my digital camera, and not returning library books on time and running up fines. It's days like these that have caused me to run up so much bother with that sort of thing in the past. I've spent way too much on library fines, allowed way too many movies to go from the cinema before seeing them, and missed soooo many lectures and seminars because of a "can't be bothered" feeling that I so frequently get. I won't let that happen today, but still, I wish I woke up every single day feeling motivated and energetic. :)

I'd better go. *grumble grumble*

Great Britain

2004-02-08T23:42:11Z

From bawston48

I've visited the counties in yellow.
Which counties have you visited?

made by marnanel
map reproduced from Ordnance Survey map data
by permission of the Ordnance Survey.
© Crown copyright 2001.

I live in South Wales, I've had 3 holidays to Devon and Cornwall, I've seen Leeds United play a couple of times in Yorkshire, I've been to Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, London, Hampshire, and Oxford as a result of Bronzer meets. I had a trip to Blackpool when I was young. A holiday in Essex. I had a school trip to Portsmouth, also when I was young. And another school trip to Llangrannog. And thats it. That map is terribly incomplete. And I *really* need to add Scotland to it sometime soon.

(Edited tonnes of times to keep correcting it. :) )

A bit of catch-up

2004-02-05T07:40:44Z

Happy Birthday django24!!!

Year so far as condensed as I can...

Our new kitten, Charl II is evil. So much more mean than Charl I was, and with much sharper claws. I have too many scratches all over my hands and arms. I wish he'd be more nice. :)

I saw 86 movies in January, I've seen 10 this month so far. Most of them have been really good, JFK was my absolute favourite, Sorority Boys was probably my least favourite.

I've read four books so far, and am currently about halfway through the first Harry Potter book: really enjoying it. Of course, I've seen the movies, so it's not like I'm discovering this story for the first time or anything, but it's still wonderful.

I've not done any of the essays I'm supposed to write, and I really need to start. I've received one of the essays I did last year back and got a 2:1 for it. It was my least favourite of the essays I wrote, and I have no intention of following up on it or writing my exam essay on it unless I absolutely have to, so I was pleased with the mark that I got. Undoubtedly, the essays I had a better time writing will come back with far worse grades. *g*

Started a couple of new modules in uni. Aristotle's Social and Political thought: not bad at all, and once I finally get around to getting The Politics I should be able to write an essay for easily enough. Plus there are only 5 lectures and 5 seminars, so it's only added one hour to my week instead of two, though that one hour is on Tuesdays, when I didn't used to have any classes, so that is a bit of a pain. The other new module is French Philosophy, which I really enjoyed the first lecture for, and have already chosen an essay title that I'd enjoy writing about. It's a shame that Rhys didn't take this one, considering he has read tonnes of Sartre and Camus, while I have read none.

I've got into next to no music this year so far, and I've not been downloading the weekly Top 40 for a good few months now. I did hear Simon And Garfunkel's Sound Of Silence in The Graduate though, and have not been able to stop listening to it since. Plus there's Sesame Street. :)

I really want Mailbox Movies to send me the final two DVD disks of 24 Season 2 before Season 3 starts on Sky on February 12th, but I'm not hopeful. This is going to result in my TiVo space being taken by programmes I may have to wait months to watch.

I've heard great things about the 100th episode of ANGEL. I'll watch that as soon as I've posted this.

I think that's about it. A couple of opinionated polls to post first.

From sunlit5

Presidential Match

How I compare to the presidential candidates on the issues:

1 Kucinich Score: 100%
2 Sharpton Score: 90%
3 Kerry Score: 86%
4 Clark Score: 82%
5 Dean Score: 82%
6 Edwards Score: 73%
7 Lieberman Score: 69%
8 Bush Score: 4%

4% with Bush? That's too high for my liking. I must have accidentally pressed the wrong answer for a couple of the questions. *g* Interesting, since I didn't really have an idea of what the main differences were between the Democratic candidates on these issues. Anyone But Bush still applies as far as I'm concerned, but it was interesting to see who I'd be supporting if there were no Republicans running for president. Dream world or what? :D

Presidential Match

and...

From dherblay, buffyannotater, atpolittlebit and rahael:

The Belief Meme

Do I believe/approve of (depending on the question)...

In God? No. Though I don't believe we can know for sure, which is a shame. I believe so strongly that there is no God that I wish it was proveable. But it's not.

In ghosts? No. And I don't believe in the human soul, so I have no idea what ghosts would be if I were to believe in them.

In aliens? With the consensus on this also. Probably, given the size of the universe, but I can't see us ever having contact with any.

In Bigfoot? No.

In fairies? No.

In ESP? No.

In superstition? People are superstitious, and these superstitions do effect the way we behave, but I don't think they're justified.

In equal rights for gays? Of course!! Shouldn't need to be asked.

In equal rights for women? Ditto.

In psychics? No.

In appearance? When forming judgements based on appearance (I try not to ever do that, but still do it) they sometimes turn out to be accurate, sometimes not. That's a no.

In auras? Nope.

In true love? Honestly don't know. :)

In happy endings? Yes!

In abortions? Yes. I don't think the government has a right to control a woman's body, and I think that potential human beings are 'better off' Not entirely accurate, since they wouldn't exist, but I can't think of another way of saying it not being born at all, than to be born into a world/family/society where they won't be loved or won't have a chance of being happy. I also believe that a foetus is not yet a person.

That is not to say that I think abortions are good things, and considering how readily available birth control is, abortion should not be treated in that way. But where birth control does fail, or when mistakes are made, abortions are right. The "should abortions be legal or illegal" debate is completely different, and that they should not be made illegal is the obvious right answer, as making them illegal would lead to women seeking other ways of getting rid of their babies, or getting 'back-alley' abortions. A lot more harm would come to mothers if abortions were made illegal. So they should not be.

In Santa? No.

In soulmates? No soul = no soulmates. :) However, I do think there are 'matches' both in terms of friendships and relationships that go beyond common interests, and that the term soulmate would be fair to use for these people. But the idea that two people were literally 'made for each other', I don't believe in.

In magic? Nope.

In evolution? Yes.

In cloning? What Rahael said: "Cloning organs and human tissue? Yes. Cloning human beings? What's the point?"

In fraggles? *blank look*

In werewolves? No.

In vampires? No.

In miracles? No.

In existing thylacines? I have no idea. That the last known one died in 1936 suggests probably not. But who knows? (I had no idea what they were, by the way. Thylacine)

In Nessie? Nope.

In existing dinosaurs? Isn't being extinct part of the definition of dinosaurs?

In interracial marriages? Absolutely.

In adoptions? Yes!

In saving the rainforests? Duh. :)

In saving dying species? Definitely. I'm just changing the ways I'm saying yes in an attempt to make my answers less... repetitive. I know, I'm not succeeding. *g*

In the human race? At times.

In recycling? Yes.

In tattoos? *cringe* I would never have one, both because of needles and because they wouldn't suit me. They do sometimes look very cool though.

In plastic surgery? I think it's a shame that some people feel the need to use it to improve/change their looks, and I'd certainly never use it, but I don't morally disapprove of it or anything.

In love in general? Honestly don't know whether I believe in this one either. I use the term, but I'm not entirely sure I know exactly what I mean when I use it.

In animal rights? Maybe. I'm not sure 'rights' is the right term to use, but when I think about it, I don't think we have the right to treat animals as we wish, and so I don't think it's right for us to kill and eat them. Despite that, I eat meat, and I don't feel at all guilty while I do so. It's complicated.

In the death penalty? I did for a very long time, but now, absolutely not. Anger and a desire for vengeance is a natural human reaction, and I wouldn't criticise a parent for killing the murderer of their child, for example, but the legal system should not exist to satisfy people's passionate reactions. The state should have no right whatsoever to decide who lives and who dies. That's not to mention that tiny little factor of mistakes being made and innocent people being executed. I'm really ashamed that I used to support this.

All of the reasons I used to support it, such as "some people deserve to die", "the world would be a better place without some people", are still views that I hold. The world would be better without some people, and I do think some people deserve to die, we just don't have the right to kill them.

I want to babble about movies later, because it's been too long since I have, but I need to see the new ANGEL first. Hope it's as good as people are saying!

P.S. I think the lack of practice has harmed my typing. It took me over 10 edits to sort out all the HTML on this post.

Also, I just heard on the radio that someone bet £13,000 on Spurs to beat Man City last night at half time, while Spurs were 3-0 up. The odds were 1-25. He would have won very little, Man City ended up coming from behind to win 4-3, and he ended up losing £13k. Shocking. Some other lucky git bet some money on Man City to win at half time, with crazy odds, and won himself thousands and thousands. Fortune favours the brave? :)

ALSO Last time I swear, how do I make it so that the mood:happy, below, shows a smiley face. Or a mood:sad showing a sad face, and so on, like a lot of other LiveJournals seem to have?

The year so far.

2004-01-21T04:49:14Z

I've gone close to three weeks without an update, so that "update more frequently" New Year's Resolution? Pretty much failed miserably. Did anyone miss me? *g*

Ok, I'm about a month late with this, but...

Welcome to LiveJournal bawston48!!!!

This year has been terrific for me so far. I'm surprised at how happy I've been. I've watched lots of movies, read books, spent time with friends, been to a Bronzer meet, and spent a lot of time chatting (which is the biggest cause of my happiness, I'd say.) Of course, I have neglected a few things: such as LiveJournal. Not only have I not been updating myself, but I've only been skim-scrolling my friends list, rather than reading everything properly. (Probably obvious from my not commenting on people's entries.) I apologise to everyone about that, and I plan on changing that straight away. Dropping a movie a day to keep up better with what's going on in my friends' lives seems well worth it. *g*

This weekend was really, really good. I've babbled almost endlessly below, not really worth reading unless you consider paragraph upon paragraph about train journeys a big hoot. I just wanted to get a little diary of the weekend written down for my own benefit.

The train journeys were long, and had changes (as you'd expect from Liverpool to Cardiff and vice-versa) but I like them. They give me a good chance to read. Although littlexander had mentioned that the Holiday Inn is only 30 seconds away from the train station, I was still paranoid that I'd get lost and not be able to find it. Happily though, as you walk out of the train station, look to your left, you see the hotel. I had thought that the hotel room was already paid for by card (I was sure that's what it had said on the 'net) but I had to pay cash to check in. Either I hadn't read properly, or the site was mis-leading. Either way, I was in a bit of a strop with Holiday Inn when I checked in. So my first thoughts in the hotel were about all the ways in which this Holiday Inn was inferior to the Holiday Inn Express we stayed in in Oxford. About the last straw was when I looked all around the wall for the hair dryer, and saw that there was not a hair dryer stuck to the wall. Hair dryers on the wall are like, the best thing about hotels! I was about ready to freak out and complain about my shabby room, when I opened to top drawer and saw that the hair dryers in these hotels are stuck inside the top drawer of a desk. I'd never seen anything like that before, and it stuck me as amusingly weird, so the hotel room was redeemed. The showers were good and especially good because I can't get a proper temperature or pressure on my shower at home and in all, the room was exactly what you'd expect from a Holiday Inn. Not anything mind-blowingly great, but not the abomination I was ready to label it as when I first checked in. I did dislike that this type of Holiday Inn didn't offer a complimentary breakfast though, and the prices on the breakfast that you could buy there scared me off (I really don't like spending money...)

Met up with littlexander and redwitch_g in the hotel lobby, and walked around Liverpool a little. I really like Liverpool a lot. I've never been there before (which adds to Oxford and Alton and later, Manchester as new places that Bronzer meets have taken me) and it seemed to have everything. A lot more than Cardiff, certainly, and it was prettier. It even had an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet restaurant right by the hotel. I went to one of those in Florida and ate until I could no longer move (I loooove Chinese food) and have wanted one of those to open in Cardiff ever since. Liverpool has one, and I'm jealous. But yeah, really nice city. Though I think littlexander felt really weird having a Bronzer meet in his own town. :)

After going out for a meal (and I kept up a life-long tradition of not having a clue what to order, seeing so many things that sound really interesting and worth trying, and then when the waiter asks for my order the reaction is *panic* "umm... burger", "plain", "yes please" and I end up with a plain burger which is really not at all interesting and not one of the things I even half-considered when I was making my ~~short~~longlist of things on the menu. Still, it was a nice meal; all of the food I had over the weekend was really nice actually. The last 3 times I've eaten out in Cardiff my food has either been overcooked, or the size of the meal has been staggeringly small, and I was worrying that the pub I worked in was the only place in the UK that actually does food well, but nope, Liverpool set that straight) we ended up going back to the hotel bar and drinking until about 1am (I say drinking, but Redwitch was the only one drinking anything stronger than coke. *g*)

On Saturday morning I met helygen for the first time, and she is every bit as fantastic in person as she is online. The four of us then did a bit of shopping (Liverpool's sci-fi shops are tonnes better than Cardiff's), had a meal and a few drinks, and then met up with stevefarrell. The bar we spent most of the day in, Yates', totally rocks. The food was really good (although the staff did keep up the pub tradition of not listening properly to orders, and as he predicted, LX ended up with coleslaw and crackers on his plate despite specifically asking not to have any) and they have Vodka Chocolate Mudshakes there, which I had never seen before. Whoever decided that putting chocolate milkshake flavoured drink together with vodka is an absolute genius. You can't taste any alcohol in them whatsoever and if they were a lot cheaper I don't think I'd have been able to stop from drinking them. Of course, a lot of the music they played in there was wretched, as Steve so brilliantly ranted about, and there were a few other down sides to the place (it was staggeringly hot in there, and after a big meal, no one had any energy at all) but I liked it a lot.

Strangely though, between 8pm and 9pm ~~on the day of the California presidential primary~~ the staff decided that just in case people in the bar wanted to get up and dance, our table, and the table next to us, would be a safety issue, and need to be taken away. Not any of the other 20+ tables, just ours and one other. Yeah, that makes sense. Of course, by this time, all those other tables were taken, so we had no choice but to leave. And I was only halfway through my jug of Vodka Redbull as well, and had to drink it a lot quicker than I'd have liked. *frown*

We went back to the hotel bar for a bit, but I had to leave within an hour or so to catch my train. The train journey back, in several parts, was a lot better than expected. I had been worried that I'd fall asleep on the train and miss my stop, and indeed, if I *had* missed my stop on the train from Liverpool, I'd have ended up in York. Thankfully, that didn't happen, I was wide awake, and got off in Manchester. I had a bit of a wait there, so decided to walk around the town. Manchester didn't look nearly as pretty at night as Liverpool did, and although all the shops were shut and I can't make a proper comparison between the two cities, I had a really strong negative reaction to Manchester, the total opposite of the reaction I'd had to Liverpool. I read at the train station for a little, but it wasn't amazingly comfortable, it cost 20 pence just to enter the toilets (ridiculous...) and all the drunk people kept walking past me and asking me what I was reading, and whether my book was really boring. Drunk clubbers find books to be boring, apparently. Very near the station was a cafe that stayed open all night, so I went in there and listened to some Dude Where's My Country on audio book. At one point, some of the drunk clubbers went in there, and one of the girls asked what I was listening to. I told her it was an audio book, she asked what that was. "You know, it's a book being read out loud on CD so that you can listen to it". "Oh, who's it by?" "Michael Moore". At that point her and her group laughed out loud for about 5-10 minutes at what a 'stupid name' Michael Moore is. I really didn't like Manchester.

Then a couple of people came into the cafe and talked way too loudly (as in, above the volume level of my cd *g*) about who they were supposed to have sex with, "but he wasn't any fun, so I shagged him and him instead", you get the picture, so I changed the CD and put my Chevelle (awesome band) album into the player and listened to that for a bit. But although you can't hear the music itself unless you have the earphones in, you can hear that there is music playing, and I was getting tonnes of frowns and funny looks from the people in the cafe, all of whom looked as rough as anything, making it clear that they didn't approve of me listening to music on a personal CD player. Thank goodness it was almost time for my next train, so I got the heck of that cafe and went back to the train station. The next train journey was the least pleasant, and the only one where I was feeling really tired. I drifted in and out of sleep, to the point where I dropped my book on the floor and stuff, and was having those *horrible* dreams where surroundings are incorporated into the dreams, and every moment you wake up, for a few split seconds, you would swear that what was in the dream was real, and that you did tell the people in the next seat over to shut the hell up, but after a few seconds of panic and worry, you remember that you were just dreaming, in time to fall asleep again and begin the cycle all over again. The little bits of sleep did make the journey go quickly though, so I got off at Birmingham, and felt wide awake again. The train journey back to Cardiff was lovely. I sat and without any tiredness read some Bill Bryson, and laughed at a passage where he complained about that really awful semi-conscious sleep I'd had over the past couple of hours. :)

Anyway, I think I'm getting more comfortable at Bronzer meets. Sometimes I'm a little nervous and worried about whether I'm being too quiet, whether I'm being to silly, etc., etc. but this weekend felt more like spending time with friends I've known my whole life, and not once did I worry about whether I was being quiet or how I was coming across. I really wish I was one of those people that remembers quotes and stuff, because I remember laughing and giggling a lot over the weekend, but can't for the life of me remember any of the things that made me laugh. Anyway, I want more Bronzer meets. They should be at least monthly. *g*

Bronzer meets rock. redwitch_g, littlexander, helygen and stevefarrell rock.

I have tonnes of movie discussion to catch up with, since I've not updated this all year and yet I've watched 54 movies this month already. Don't worry, I have no intention of talking about all of them. *g*

I'll say this much now though, in case I go on another extended absence.
JFK is the best movie ever.
Oliver Stone is the best director ever.

Rocky sucks.

(Not, you know, The Rock... who rocks (not a word bawston48!!! :p) but the movie.)

I really despise the preview feature that LiveJournal has. What good is a preview that doesn't show up half of the HTML properly? The preview function at the Beta was one of my favourite things about the place. Thank goodness for faithx5's idea of posting entries as private entries before making them public. That is going to be a life saver. :)

I did the Dante's Inferno test again recently. Probably of all the online quizzes, this is the one I liked most.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	High
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test

My level has actually gone up, but I've dropped down from having all extremely high and high ratings to having a bunch of medium and low ratings. Have I honestly become so much less evil? I don't like it. I liked having such a high evil rating. *eg*

Wow, this entry really is all over the place.

And finally, a meme, taken from stevefarrell

Recommend to me one of each of the following

1: A movie.
2: A book.
3: A musical artist.
4: An LJ user on your friends' list who isn't on mine.

Don't worry about the last one if you don't want to, since I'm too scared to friend people on livejournal before they friend me, in case they don't like me, but I'd really appreciate recommendations in the first 3 categories from everyone. If you want to, of course. :)

I may update more later or tomorrow. I hope I will. This isn't going to be a particularly effective diary for me to look back over my year, week, etc. if I'm only updating once every blue moon. My other new year's resolution, to start playing the lottery I need to at least *play* the lottery so that my 'when I win the lottery...' claims can have some basis in possibility, I've not done either. I shouldn't have made resolutions. I never keep them. :)

Happy New Year!

2004-01-01T03:37:38Z

First of all... a belated

Happy Birthday atter!!

Hope you had a great one!

I think I've got to the point where writing up LiveJournal entries has become chore-like. I feel like I have an obligation to myself to keep them, if only to be able to look back over my life (in a way) in years' time, and to get down at least my immediate reaction to the movies I watch and books I read, since I don't want to forget what I think about movies (like I have about many I've seen before.) But, I've been meaning to type out an entry since before Christmas Day, and I keep putting it off. I think part of the reason is the size of the entries. Obviously, typing out a 1000+ word entry is going to take me a heck of a lot longer than if I just updated every day with smaller entries. So I think this might be the last of my massive livejournal entries. Whether I stick to this or not is another matter. But I don't want something I like as much as LiveJournal to be something I put on par with essays as something I *have* to do, rather than something I want to do. I enjoy writing them, but it take me ages to get started on them. I think this year I'll update more regularly with much smaller posts. That's the plan anyway. We'll see how it goes.

I had a really great Christmas this year. One of the best I can remember having. Partly because Christmas/New Year is always a time when I look back over the year and compare my life now to how it was in previous Christmasses, and thanks to all the friends I've made, my life is so much better than it has been for years. The other reason is that I got cool presents, and spent the entire day with the family without there being any arguments. :) My two youngest brothers got Air Hockey for Christmas. It doesn't do a lot for the living room, since it's big, and in the middle of the room, and makes the place look cluttered. But it's air hockey!! In our living room! :D I, by the way, totally suck at it. I am yet to win a single game against any of my brothers. Plus they got a bunch of board games like Battleships, Ker-Plunk and Connect 4 that I've not played in years and years, but still love playing. (I know, I'm a total kid. *g*)

I hadn't been expecting any Christmas presents at all this year. I ended up with computer games, and books, and loads of clothes (some of them smart! *g*) and a bunch of other stuff too. I'm really overwhelmed by the kindness of some people. :) Oooh, and we had Christmas dinner for the first time in a good few years. It was just a really great day all round, and I realise now that spending the day playing board games and computer games with my brothers is the way I should spend every Christmas.

Oh, and at 1am on Christmas morning (yes, of course I was awake *g*) a guy knocked on the door and asked if we had any petrol since his car had run out while he was in our street. Of course, we don't carry spare cans of petrol around the house, but we said he could take some from our car and put into a can to put into his car. None of us had the right equipment for doing this though, so in order to take petrol from our car this guy put an old shower pipe thing (that we had lying around since we got new shower parts a month or so ago and it takes that long for us to clear stuff up *g*) into the car and sucked on the tube to get the petrol to come out. So he had petrol fumes going into his mouth and he was coughing like there was no tomorrow. Poor guy. :( (Though he did get the petrol he needed and managed to drive away, so I'm glad we could at least help somewhat.) I'm just mentioning this because it's one of the most weird things I can ever remember. It seems normal, I guess... but there was just something so weird about it, and on Christmas morning of all times! Ok, I'll stop babbling. :)

So, anyway. I had a really great Christmas. :)

I've been totally unable in this entry to put my finger on exactly why it was great. It was one of those days that just felt right, where everything went right and nothing went wrong, I guess. See, I'm still babbling now... does anyone else get this thing where if you're writing about a certain subject, you can't quite find the right words to express what you're thinking, so you just keep babbling and babbling, not necessarily deliberately, because you haven't been able to express yourself properly? I get this all the time, and it's one of the biggest reasons why I go on and on so much.

On Christmas Eve I watched The Remains Of The Day. This is the first time I have ever watched a movie based on a book I've read (and similarly, I've not read a book based on a movie) so this is the very first time I'm able to get a feeling for the differences between the two mediums. It's fitting, I think, that my first movie-based-on-a-book-that-I've-read experience should be one based on my absolute favourite book of all time.

The Remains Of The Day was the book that was instrumental in me doing well in my last year of school. Throughout my A-Level English Literature course I absolutely loved the lessons, but didn't read a single one of the books, nor write a single essay. So discussions in the classes would almost always be about things other than the specifics of the books. We'd talk about general themes and things, but when it came to any textual analysis at all, there was nothing at all for me to say. For each of the books I had read a chapter or so of, but my attitude towards reading was so overwhelmingly negative that I never gave any of them a chance. I dismissed poetry outright as being boring and pointless, I put Jane Eyre immediately into the category of 'boring old classic books that I have no intention of ever reading' and I had a pretty negative view of Shakespeare as well. The very last book we were given to read was The Remains Of The Day. I always got myself into the state of mind of "Oh, I suppose I should do my homework this time", though it infrequently turned out like that, but that was enough to get me to read a few pages of the book. Not enough to get into the story or anything, but, a start at least. Then a week or so later I went to a party, and took the book with me (was the only book I had lying around) in case I left the party early, and couldn't get to sleep. (I was going to be staying at my old house - which still had beds and things, but everyone had moved out of there, so it was without a TV or computer or anything like that at all.) The party was as boring as anything I'd experienced in a long time, so I did end up going back to the house long before I was tired. With nothing better to do, I thought I may as well do a little bit of reading...

I couldn't put the book down. I got totally engrossed in the story, cared deeply about the characters, went through loads of different emotions as I read it, and basically fell in love with the book. I wrote, and enjoyed writing, essay plans about it and actually discussed the book in detail in classes. It also made me realise again how wonderful reading can be. So me and one of my friends (who had always been into reading and doing his essays and stuff) spent pretty much all our free time in school (for a few weeks) writing loads and loads of essay plans, and I found it staggering at the time how much I actually enjoyed writing them. My teacher actually had to point out to me that one of my Paradise Lost essay plans was, essentially, an essay. *g* I'd like to say that I managed to read all 8 of my English Literature books, but I'm far too slow a reader for that. But I *wanted* to read them all, that's the important thing, right? :) And I did read Jane Eyre, and really loved it. Anyway, those essay plans and actually reading the books paid off since I got an A (which surprised everyone, including myself), but really it was The Remains Of The Day that I most loved reading, and that which I most enjoyed writing my essay on in the exam. I'd lost track of that over the last few years until halfway through this year when I got back into reading, and I'm so glad I have.

Wow, tangent or what? :)

Anyway, The Remains Of The Day is a terrific movie as well. Anthony Hopkins does a truly amazing job as Stevens, the English butler whose life has been characterised by putting duty ahead of everything else, a misguided loyalty to his former employer, and a refusal to accept or express his own romantic feelings for Miss Kenton (a superb performance from Emma Thompson.) It's a melancholy story: Stevens' denial of his own feelings result in him not having a happy life with the woman that he loves, but a wasted life of doing a brilliant job as butler for a man that, in the end, didn't deserve the respect or loyalty that he received. It's heartbreaking, but is so filled with humour and charm, and sends such an uplifting message telling you to seize the day, to admit and express your feelings for the person you love, that it's a really powerful and lovely story, despite all the loneliness of the characters.

This is very possibly the best unrequited love story I have ever seen. One of the key scenes was Miss Kenton catching Stevens reading a novel, his refusal to allow her to see what it is, and his almost-squirming in embarrassment (though, still keeping a perfectly straight face of course, because he's Stevens) as he tries to conceal what he's reading, and it turning out to be nothing more than a romantic novel. The whole love story was summed up in that scene. Stevens repression of his own feelings. Ditto that for the scene where she puts some flowers in Stevens room to brighten the room up, and he refuses them because he wants to keep distractions to a minimum. His refusal to allow Miss Kenton to brighten up his life because of his desire to be one hundred per cent committed to doing a perfect job as butler. So sad.

The movie is absolutely full of little touches like that, and add to that an entire background plot about the build-up to the Second World War, and a hundred other things I've not mentioned, and this is one of the best movies of all time.

I think I understand what people meant when they've told me that books are better than movies. Because as great as this movie was, it still wasn't as good as the book. The movie had absolutely perfect performances from everyone, and it didn't have a single flaw. It was a perfect movie. Yet it still didn't quite touch me to the extent that the book did, or run me through so many emotions.

Still, if you've never seen the movie, I can't encourage you enough to check this one out. Truly superb.

I've seen an absolute tonne of movies over Christmas. Going through the double-sized TV guide had me choosing about 5 movies every single day that I wanted to watch. Naturally, I didn't get anywhere close to that, but I did still watch a fair few.

Having loved Once Upon A Time In Mexico, I watched the first two parts of Robert Rodriguez' trilogy, El Mariachi and Desperado. The latter, I loved. It looked great, had lots of good gun fighting, cool weapons, brilliant Mexican music as the score, and moved really quickly. I didn't enjoy the former anywhere near as much. Not only did it lack the score music that Desperado had, but I thought the directing was really bad. There was a whole lot of slow-motion, fast motion, weird edits, etc. that had the effect of taking me out of the movie a little. Sometimes that sort of thing can make a movie work a lot better, and help the pace of it. For this, it just felt over-directed to me, as if he was trying out different techniques for the sake of it, not because they were needed to tell the story. Also, the movie really highlighted just how much Antonio Banderas brings to the lead role, since the guy who played El Mariachi in this one didn't have the same screen presence or charisma. Perhaps that's best, since this showed his origins, before he was heroic in any way, and perhaps with an actor of Banderas' presence it would have been difficult to buy him as an innocent bystander brought into something way over his head. The movie has the novelty value of being made for less than £10,000, and of course Rodriguez deserves loads of credit for that. I just didn't think it was a great movie. Of the three, I definitely think Once Upon A Time In Mexico is the best, since it has all the great things that Desperado has, plus Johnny Depp. But they've all been interesting.

One of the best movies I saw over Christmas was the Pride And Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, aired as a six part mini-series. This was another of those movies that was completely perfect. There wasn't a single element of it that could have been improved on. It had so much warmth, and charm, and humour, and the performances from ever single member of the cast were so good that it felt completely real. I felt connected to the characters, and cared about them, in a way I rarely do with even my favourite movies. Colin Firth was awesome, as he is in everything, but it was Jennifer Ehle that really grabbed me. I hadn't seen her in anything before and a quick look at her page on IMDB shows that she hasn't been in a whole lot of movies, but she was amazing. One of those truly captivating performances where you feel everything that her character feels. She was great, and the whole movie was great.

I've seen Goodfellas finally! I've been told for about four years that I really need to see this movie, both my my real life friends and then by mrcrain, and it didn't disappoint. One thing that always strikes me about gangster movies is how likeable and sympathetic the characters seem to be, when in reality they should not be. None of these characters are good people, and yet there's a certain glamour and coolness to them that makes us like them. The same is true of the characters, and this movie shows this from the very first part of Ray Liotta's narration, they see the gangster life as being a glamourous and powerful one, and even when they become one, they think there's a lot of honour and respect in it, but in the end there is none of the honour they think there is, it's all about money, and their lives are all meaningless to each other. Plus, they almost always end up dead or in prison. Joe Pesci's Tommy was particularly nasty and horrible (like, *really*), but cracked me up so much that it was almost impossible not to like him ("I'm funny how? Funny like a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh? I'm here to F'ing amuse you?" - that whole scene was one of the best I've ever seen in a movie.) The whole movie was just fantastic though. The narration, the direction, and three truly outstanding performances from Liotta, De Niro and Pesci make this one of my favourite gangster movies of all time, if not my absolute favourite.

I think that Stanley Kubrick is the most overrated director of all time. I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey over Christmas, and while it was interesting, some of the shots were quite breathtaking, and the use of classical music was really good, the storytelling was just about as bad as it gets. It's a pity, because the movie has a message, and things that are probably worth thinking about, but the story was so badly told (the pacing was just terrible, the characters didn't develop and made no impression whatsoever, the plot wasn't engaging) that I really couldn't care. It's a pity, because I really did want to like this. Movies that do something completely different, and challenge you to think instead of just sitting back and relaxing, are something that appeal to me in principle. And stuff like using Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra and how the ideas in Nietzsche's book of the same name ran through the movie, from the very beginning with the apes. But none of that mattered when I got so bored that I was constantly checking the time to see how much longer the film would be on for. Add to this my dislike for all the other movies of his that I've seen. I hated Eyes Wide Shut, thought A Clockwork Orange was pretty weak, especially for the first hour or so, and consider The Shining to be completely boring, unscary and overrated (plus I really didn't think Jack Nicholson was any good in it.) Since then, I have seen Full Metal Jacket, which I did absolutely love. The first half especially, because R. Lee Ermey was just outstanding and really cracked me up. This was a movie that managed to explore the message of dehumanisation in the army, but managed to be thoroughly entertaining as well - it had that balance to it that 2001 didn't. Still, having seen five of his movies, and liked only one of them, I think it's fair to say I'm not a Kubrick fan at all.

Some of the other movies I've seen include Double Indemnity (which absolutely blew me away, and is, I think, my new favourite black and white film - staggeringly good), Bonnie And Clyde (which I loved), Rebel Without A Cause (which I didn't like *at all*, and I really hated James Dean in it - but the movie seems to be praised by most people that watch it - if anyone can tell me what's so good about it, I'd appreciate it), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which was alright - had some good songs in it, but was a bit... strange, for my liking), The Adventures Of Robin Hood (they do these adventure movies a lot better now, but this was still great, and it was interesting to see the origins of this sort of movie, and a good blend of action and humour as far back as 1938) and Boyz N The Hood (really great movie, but as any movie that deals seriously with black-on-black murder in American inner-cities is going to be, was depressing and upsetting as well.)

I didn't got to the cinema nearly enough last month. Just seen a couple of movies there in the last few weeks. The Return Of The King which I liked a lot more than I thought I would, and after an hour and a half finally cared about these characters for the first time in the entire trilogy, and Peter Pan, which I liked well enough, though it was a bit... I guess childish, for my liking. Though I did watch it with Alun, and watching a movie is always fun with him making comments like "do you think we're gonna get to see Tinkerbell's boobs?" all the way through. :) Fine, I'm easily amused. *g*

New Year's Eve was really good. It wasn't a wild, partying New Year's Eve or anything of the sort, but I still really enjoyed myself. We went to a club in Bedwas, which is where I used to live for about 10 years... so it was weird bumping into my uncles, my old neighbours, my dad, etc. There were 8 of us in all, which was fairly impressive considering it was all organised last minute. The most fun conversations me and my friends ever have are ones where we look back over our school days (I say it as if it was more than just a few years ago!) and talk about all the things we did back then. The vast majority of last night's conversation was spent doing that, and I think we were all laughing for pretty much the entire night (even the couple of people who were with us that hadn't gone to our school and didn't know any of us except one were laughing.) Despite being someone who can't help but constantly look back over the past, and I do at times wonder about whether I've been wasting my life, me and my friends all have an almost infinite supply of memories from our school days that will keep us entertained for the rest of our lives. Half the stuff that was brought up I'd almost forgotten, and it's great having my memory refreshed with that sort of thing. Plus when people I don't know well and are meeting for the first time are laughing at stories of me and others during high school, it always makes me feel good. Conversations like that also serve as a pretty good reminder about how much fun I've actually had in my life, which I don't always appreciate.

Either way. I remained totally sober, my brother was getting bored because he couldn't drink (since he was driving), and so he drove me and him home shortly after midnight. But I ended the year happy, and with my friends. A good end to a good year. :)

Happy New Year everyone!!!!

I hope you all have a really fantastic 2004!

Test The Nation Again

2003-12-23T18:31:56Z

They did the latest Test The Nation yesterday. This time on the events of 2003.

This post will be almost identical to the post I made on Test The Nation back in September. Except, I scored one point lower this time. *sigh!*

I scored 38/70.

Headlines of the Year - 10/15
People of the Year - 6/15
Popular Culture - 7/15
2003: The Year Of... - 7/15
Pot Luck - 8/10

Take The Test! (Might take a little while to load.)

How did everyone else do?

The holidays rock.

2003-12-20T00:04:37Z

Yay! Crossover now has a livejournal.

Welcome to LiveJournal mrcrain!!!

Yay! Turk now has a LiveJournal too!!

Welcome to LiveJournal bjk!!!

I'm enjoying these Christmas holidays a lot. No uni, no work, enough money to be able to go out when I like, and tonnes and tonnes of free time. It's neat.

Also, I'm getting Christmas cards this year for the first time in... years, and it's making me very happy. Thank you so much to stevefarrell, corrupteroffire, django24, helygen, wastedfairy, and faithx5 for the cards!!

Ok, I haven't updated in ages, and I've wrote parts of this entry over the past few days, and had go through some of it changing the tense, etc. because it took me so long to get the entry finished! I'll get the negative out of the way first.

I *hate* o2. My mobile has £11 on it, but I'm not allowed to make any calls on it because I haven't topped up my phone in over 60 days. Maybe because I don't *need* to update it, since I have 11 quid on there!?! Whoever decided that phones that don't top up frequently should be barred deserves serious punishment. I would have been willing to top it up Wednesday, since I needed to use it badly, but no shops in our area sell top-up vouchers any more, only stupid swipe card things. This wouldn't usually be a problem, except my house phone was broken. It wasn't our fault in any way, apparantly BT have admitted that they are at fault, and they did end up fixing it yesterday. Yesterday - not a whole lot of good. Rhys' 21st was on Thursday, and I needed to organise a day/night out. Some of my friends don't use the net, so I had absolutely no way of contacting them at all, so I wasn't able to organise anything. We still had a night out, but there weren't over 10 of us or anything as there may have been had crap like that not happened. But the principle of the matter is what really bothers me. That I a) should be required to top up my phone with credit I don't need - which is a total waste and b) that BT would mess up causing phones to not work, and not fix them on that very same day (what if there was an emergency or something?!) I hate phone companies.

And having things unresolved or frustrating like that stops me from doing other things. I can't get into the mood to watch TV or a movie, or read a book, or anything like that when things start going wrong. All I wanted to do at that time was phone my friends, and I couldn't. So frustrating, and would have really ruined my Wednesday had I not finally gone and played The Wind Waker which cheered me up.

Anyway, that aside, the Christmas holidays have rocked. Went out last Saturday night with Rhys and Glyn, played lots of pool, went to Metros (we had decided not to go to a club since there were just 3 of us, but changed our minds), got very drunk. Good night out. Sunday, woke up with a hangover (which is very rare for me), sat around chatting to Rhys and Glyn for a few hours by which time the hangover was gone. Since then, I've read over 100 pages of a book each day, watched on average 2 movies a day, watched loads and loads of TV shows, progressed a heck of a lot through the computer game I'm playing, and still spending the early hours of the morning on the net (until about 3am, usually.) Thursday was indeed Rhys' 21st, and rather than go out into Cardiff a group of us went to a quiet pub in Machen, which was a decent night. And then last night we had a game of indoor football, which was absolutely brilliant. We only get an hour to play, and I was of course absolutely nackered within a few minutes, but there was a really great turn-out (7 a side), and because there was so little space the particularly skilled players weren't able to get a lot of time on the ball - which acted as a sort of equaliser to stop there from being a gulf in play between the best and worst players. I can't remember an hour going by so fast as that one did - really great. I was last picked though. I can't believe I was last picked! :)

I'm progressing loads through The Wind Waker now. I love Zelda games so much. This one took me a little while to really get into, and I took a few breaks from it when I got stuck, but I have finally reached that feeling again where I enjoy spending hours and hours playing it. Zelda games have always had the ability to sort of transport me into their world while I'm playing, and getting me really into the story. That has happened on this now as well. One of my brothers (the 10 year old one) has been way ahead of me on the game for months, but he was stuck on one particular part and had become disillusioned and frustrated with the game because of it. So he went w few months without playing it. I've finally figured out what he needed to do, and did that on his file for him, so he's back playing it as well now. He will undoubtedly end up completing the game before I do. :)

"People sometimes ask me, 'What is the difference between baseball and cricket?' The answer is simple. Both are games of great skill involving balls and bats, but with this crucial difference: baseball is exciting and when you go home at the end of the day you know who won."

Bill Bryson cracks me up. :) I'm reading his Notes From A Big Country now, and really loving it. His style is just so perfect: hilarious, informative, and a brilliant way of making the reader (in this case me *g*) relate to everything he writes. When I read Notes From A Small Island a few months ago there was so many occasions where I'd nod or laugh knowingly at some of the elements of British life he'd single out, or others where I'd never really understood how strange or different some of our customs are. Reading anecdotes about the difference between the USA and the UK is something I really enjoy, especially since talking to American friends about a lot of these same issues. I love reading things in a book that I've actually had discussions about before. Yup, really enjoying this book.

I've just read a news article about the race for Christmas Number One. This is by far the greatest race for Christmas #1 we've had in, well, a good long while! Also, The Idols are trailing far behind the leading two, so it's definitely looking like it'll be either The Darkness or the Mad World cover. Both would be excellent, as far as I'm concerned. I've always had a preference for Christmassy songs being Christmas Number One, which was one of my many complaints about Westlife's success in getting the spot, but the Mad World cover is such an amazing song.

Watched a fair few movies since the last time I updated this (which was over a week ago!) That included a bit of an Alfred Hitchcock marathon. I saw The 39 Steps which I really enjoyed - the 'man on the run' thriller is something Hitchcock seems to do really well. North By Northwest did it brilliantly, as did this, and I've heard that some other movies of his have this element to them as well. Also blended in elements of comedy really well, with two mis-matched characters being stuck with each other and the banter that comes from that. I didn't like it as much as North By Northwest, but still thought it an excellent comedy thriller.

Then watched Rebecca, which I also loved. The slower paced movies like this can be amazing for building up the atmosphere of a movie, and that was so evident in this one. It was really haunting, and powerful: the direction was outstanding. The characters were all brilliant as well, and the acting was great all round, especially from Joan Fontaine. Judith Anderson was very creepy as Mrs. Danvers, and yes ladyeleanor, George Sanders was fantastic. :) Loved this one.

Also saw Foreign Correspondent (that word took me ages to learn how to spell!), which from comments I've read, seems to be a largely forgotten movie. That's a pity, as this is one of the best Hitchcock movies I've seen. Had all the elements that make spy thrillers good - intrigue, plot twists, as well as humour and really memorable images. Great movie. And I have I mentioned that George Sanders rocks?

After that I watched Hitchcock's final movie, Family Plot, which I also liked, though it didn't have the same magic that Hitchcock's movies usually do. It just didn't feel like one of his movies. There was nothing wrong with the movie: it had a good blend of mystery and humour, had a decent story, wonderful score music, and was an enjoyable movie overall. But the sitcom-esque nature of the characters and a lot of the dialogue, as well as the lack of really powerful images and moments of suspense, make it inferior to most of the other Hitchcock movies I've seen.

And finally, I just watched Psycho. (billandjo, took me long enough didn't it! :)) One thing that's obvious is how much Bernard Herrmann's music adds to a movie. North By Northwest grabbed me from the title sequence, because the theme music was so outstanding, and that was the case with this movie as well. Another thing that really stood out about the movie was how unique the structure was. To build up a character, storyline, introduce problems and a dilemma for her for 40 minutes, and then, well, you know. That's mis-direction at its best, and makes the shower scene even more shocking and scary. Although I didn't actually find this movie scary (The Ring is still the only movie to have ever scared me), it was unbelievably creepy. Great movie!

5 Hitchcock movies in a week. Not bad, right? :)

A couple of other movies I watched:

Run Lola Run - Brilliant, brilliant movie. Brilliant editing, and made the movie so fast-paced it was quicker than most music videos and the soundtrack worked a treat. I was tapping my feet to the entire movie! I absolutely love the simple premise as well - how do the smallest changes in what we would have done effect our lives and others? To have such a short, lightning-speed movie and still get in the added depth that this movie did, is amazing. A masterpiece.

City Of God - A truly outstanding movie about life in the Brazilian slums. Darkly funny at times, staggeringly powerful at other times. Brilliant storytelling, unbelievably realistic acting, and dealing with a massive group of characters as their lives progress (not for too long, since this is a Rio De Janeiro slum, and their lives tend to be over fairly quickly.) Because of that, and the fact that the really awful things the movie deals with are going on in real life (little kids carrying machine guns, etc.) it's not an easy film to watch - it's very brutal and violent, but all the more powerful for it. Sort of a cross between gangster movies, Tarantino's movies, and a documentary/hyper-realism style, in Brazil. One of the best movies I have ever seen, definitely one of the top 10 movies of this century (which accounts for the vast majority of movies that I've watched.) Despite how hard to watch this may be it does have moments of happiness and charm in amongst all the bleakness, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Ok, I've rambled enough. (Though in spellchecking this entry I've realised I wanted to babble a little more about TV shows as well. Another time I guess.) I can't not mention this though...

We have a new kitten! He's absolutely adorable. Has just learned typing *g*, discovered toys, snuggling up to my jumper (which is *not* a dress, faithx5 and kaymyth *g*) and even plays with the dogs. I need to get and post some pictures of him as soon as possible. When I do, I guarantee you will all go "awww". :) Sooo adorable!

Would hate to let a bandwagon pass me by...

2003-12-11T21:46:33Z

From tenik:

I know very little about some of the people on my friends' list. Some people I know relatively well. I read your fic, or we have something else in common and we chat occasionally. Some of you I hardly know at all. Perhaps you lurk, for whatever reason. But you friended me and I thank you.

But here's a thought: why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: "Ah, there's so and so...she likes spinach."

I'd love it if every single person who friended me would do this. Yes, even you people who I know really well. Then post this in your own journal.

Please. :)

Procrastination is the cause of all problems.

2003-12-11T19:15:51Z

Rhys: They wouldn't kick me out of uni or anything would they, if I don't give my essays in until after the Christmas holidays?
Me: Of course not.
Rhys: Good. Looks like I've just been granted a month and half extension then.

Cracks me up. :) And, my essay 'challenge' is proving to be a failure. Turns out they are 1500-2000 word essays, not 1000 like I thought. My sleeping trouble over the past week hasn't helped one bit. Nor has my procrastination. So here I am with 5 and a half hours to go before uni, with two entire essays left to write. Looks like failure to me. I may give one more essay a go, but obviously I have no chance of writing two of them in such a short space of time, especially at the pace I've been writing lately. Looks like I've just been granted a month and half extension. *g*

Honestly though, it's fairly depressing, because I had this target of 4 essays by today, a target that I knew was achievable, and yet I've failed to achieve it. No long term harm will come from this, and they'll accept the essays after Christmas. But I just don't like it when I fail to achieve what I set out to.

Computer Help Needed - I posted this at the Beta, but no one seems to have known the answer, so I'll try here. When I click on the vertical scroll bar on the right hand side of the screen, it used to scroll a webpage down one 'page down' so that I could use that to scroll down pages without missing in anything. Since last night, one click on that bar has started taking the page down the length of two 'page down's, so I can't use it to scroll since it skips half of what I want to be reading. Is anyone familiar with this problem at all, and do they know how to fix it? I'll really appreciate any help on this one, as using the keyboard to scroll down has started to drive me insane.

This month started really well for me, but I've had really bad trouble sleeping over the last week, and it has more of an effect on my mood than it probably should do. But when I'm in a sleep pattern I'm not liking, things annoy me a lot more easily. Then just to make pretty much everything worse, there was yesterday.

The plan I had was to finish my Philosophy Of History essay in the afternoon, go into town to watch a movie that was on its last play in my cinema yesterday, come home and get a couple of hours done on my essay, get to bed really early (like, 6-7pm), wake up at 2amish ready to finish off that last essay, and start and complete my last essay. Didn't exactly go to plan. First of all, the History essay took me a lot longer to complete than I was expecting, partly because I did 2000 words instead of 1500 as I was planning to (I hope I get a good grade for this one), and because I was having serious trouble wording things so that they sounded right. But, it wasn't too big a deal, and my schedule for the day could have still been accomplished. Then it came to printing the essay, and as it turned out my black ink cartridge was empty. I have an ink refill, but instead of a simple cartridge swap, this one involves needles and ball bearings and all sorts of trouble as I try to inject the black ink from a needle into the ink cartridge. This all involved scrolling through "buy cheap ink here" sites until I found one that offered instructions, and even then, the instructions were nowhere near dumbed down enough for me to follow properly (for me to follow instructions without getting things wrong they really do need to be along the lines of "put your left hand at the bottom of the bottle..." etc.) So I got ink everywhere, but did manage to get some into the ink cartridge. Another wonderful trait of these ink cartridges is that they will leak out of the bottom for a little while after refilling, so the ink needs dabbing off with kitchen towel for 2 minutes, and once that's happened, they should stop leaking. They didn't. So the ink was still leaking, but the instructions made it clear that the kitchen towel should not be held on the cartridge for more than two minutes or it would leak like there's no tomorrow. What in the world am I supposed to do in that situation?! So, I just thought, "I need to get this over", and just put it in the printer. However, the plug that comes with the refill that stops the ink from pouring back out of the hole I filled it up using, was stopping it from going back in the printer (I know, freaking typical!) At this point over an hour had passed and I was just about going insane. (The symptom of me going insane is to yell a lot and get in a big strop.) After a further 30 minutes of trying to get that stupid plug further in, using a hammer and stuff, it was clear that it simply wasn't going to go further in. My mom came up with the genius idea of using a scissors to cut some of the plug off, and thank goodness that worked! (Yay mom!) But of course, by this time the print head was leaking like there's no tomorrow and leaving big ink streaks all across the printer and paper. I'm not sure if this will ever stop or if the cartridge is permanently damaged. Either way, after the printer goes through it's cleaning process, it's a short while before the print head starts leaking again, so i can, thankfully, print some stuff off. So, I started to print my essay...

There's more...

So, I realised as it was printing that I didn't have enough paper in the printer to print the essay, so I grabbed a bunch of paper sheets and tried to put them in. As it happened, I pushed them in too far and the printer started to suck up this big-ish stack of paper while it was printing. This of course led to the paper being stuck in the printer. So I had to turn the printer off, yank the paper out, and try to start again. But apparantly if there's a problem with the printer half way through a printing operation, it goes insane and starts printing out a single line of weird symbols for ages. I so wish I was making this up. So I had 3 pieces of paper going through the printer over and over again to have these symbols printed on them, after about 20 minutes I thought that maybe it would never stop, and I should try some other things. Cancelling all the print operations. Turning off the printer. Restarting the pc. Pretty much everything I could think of. In the end, it seemed that the printer just needed to get these symbols out of its system I swear, I am being punished. So it finally stopped doing this, I printed off a test page to make sure it would start printing things properly now, and it would. Except of course, by this time, the ink cartridge had started leaking again. I could have cried.

Of course, I got the essay printed in the end, 3 hours later than planned. I didn't see the movie I wanted to see, and not only was it on its last play but was part one of a trilogy. I didn't get another essay started. Plus I was staggeringly upset and frustrated, the day had a feeling of "everything is going wrong", so I went to bed.

Suffice it to say, yesterday was not good at all. :(

Ok, rant over! I really needed to vent about that one. Printers! *rolleyes* I'm fine now of course, but the frustration that comes from this sort of thing is really overwhelming at times. Plus the added effect of my plan for the day being ruined. Never mind. Last day of uni today, then it doesn't matter what my sleeping pattern is like, or whether my printer is working, or whether I can get into town by a certain time, etc. I'm really looking forward to these Christmas holidays.

Got news back from my job. It starts again on January 14th. That would be the week before I go back to uni, so it will be the same week all my friends leave for their unis. Works out perfectly! I have the Christmas holidays free, and then back to work and uni together. Plus there's no massive absence of money as I had been expecting.

We are starting to get stuff organised for Christmas. We have an indoor football game planned for the 19th, Rhys' 21st is on the 18th, we may be going out this Saturday as well. Plus all the stuff we'll organise when the rest of my friends get back from uni. I say this every holiday, but I am determined to spend as much time with my friends as possible this time. Even if it's just a few friends coming over for some movie-watching, that used to be something we did all the time, and always enjoyed, and we've not done that since, well, uni I guess. OooOoo (tenik - the OooOooing is seriously addictive *g*), and one of my friends is getting a UGC Unlimited Card. I will finally have someone to actually go and see movies with! Speaking of movies...

On Wednesday night I watched The Count Of Monte Cristo. I've not read the book, although I have intended to for months since strangestgirl first recommended it to me, so I was basing the film only on its own merits. And I completely loved it. One of the best movies I've seen recently. It looked absolutely amazing, and the story (which I was not already familiar with, unlike most people who'd have watched the movie *g*) was great. Plus I have another actor to add to my favourites list: Guy Pearce. I've really enjoyed all the performances I've seen him in recently, plus he has the 'credit' of having appeared in both Neighbours *and* Home And Away. *g* My little brothers watched this one with me (The Count, not Home And Away) and really loved it. They were both getting bored after 10 minutes and one the verge of stopping watching. I told them that they should keep watching, and they were totally gripped for the next two hours. :) I win. :D

Yesterday morning before the day went wrong I watched The Last Picture Show. Absolutely amazing. Really cleverly made, I thought, with the lack of opening credits, the black and white worked brilliantly, and the way that all the scenes lasted longer than they would in most movies gave the film a sort of 'special' feel. Plus it did an amazing job of portraying a small town and a group of people, and all the sadness that underlies each of them. Brilliant performances, and brilliant directing. Loved this one.

Game-wise, I'm getting further and further through The Wind Waker. My second youngest brother is miles and miles ahead of me on it, so he's helping me every time I get stuck or have no idea what to do (which is not infrequently) and I've got a fair bit done. Deus Ex is kicking my arse. I like it, but I suck sooo much at it. Gonna take a fair bit of play before I get anywhere near the skill level needed to, oh, complete any objectives. *g* I am officially the worst gamer in the world, ever.

And finally, Christmas has come way too quickly this year, and I *want* to be Christmas spirity, but am not. We have a tiny tree on the computer desk, it has these lights that change colour, but it makes a sort of vibrating sound every time they change colour, and it gets on everyone's nerves except mine, so they turned them off. There are no decorations or anything of the sort. No one has written any Christmas cards yet (sorry about the likely lateness of them!). Our whole family looks like letting Christmas pass us by this year (presents aside) and it's a shame. On the presents front, I got an XBox game for one brother, and a Gameboy Advance SP with a couple of games for my other brothers (yes, all of these presents also benefit me *g*) I have some more presents to get, but, I'm already doing better than I have in any recent Christmas when it comes to getting stuff. But, it's the other Christmas stuff I like, and none of it is happening. December 12th is way too late to put decorations up, right?

Happy Birthday kestratroi!!!

I never update this as frequently as I want to.

2003-12-09T04:33:32Z

The Christmas holidays feel like they've started, even though I still have a week left of uni and am stuck in Essay Hell. (Thank you wastedfairy for the term, and yes, it is *very* appropriate!)

Speaking of said essay hell, I have 4 essays to do by next week (one by Monday, one by Wednesday, two by Friday - though none of these essays contribute to the overall degree, so there's no pressure beyond my own wanting to do them because I know it'll help me in these courses in the long run, and it's not going to be the end of the world if I hand them in late.)

The one I handed in on Monday was the Ethics one. There were some decent titles on the list, but those are all on subjects we've not already had lectures on, and as I'd left the essay until the last two days before the deadline I really needed lecture notes to form the foundation of whatever essay I decided to write. I did Hume's theory of justice in the end, but I can't see myself wanting to write about that in the exam. On Saturday I really hated it, I spent 3 hours trying to start it, completely failed to come up with an introduction, changed my mind about doing the essay at all, changed it back, etc. etc. (and this is what the worst sympton of essay hell is: when it all seems so impossible.) Sunday wasn't so bad, I got it all done, and got to the 1500 words I was meant to do. I did a bibliography. I couldn't be bothered to reference so I didn't, but actually doing the bibliography is a step up for me when it comes to essays that don't contribute to the final grade. Anyway, the worst one is out of the way. Philosophy of History essay to do today, ready to be handed in tomorrow, and I have a title ready that I'm alright with.

One thing I've noticed is that I've raised my standards. I feel like I should be using books for these, and other sources than just the lecture hand outs. I can't, because I have massive library fines to pay due to procrastination and am not allowed to take any books out until I pay those fines, and it's annoying me. But I never used books at all for my unassessed essays last year, so why the fuss now? *sigh*

On Friday in uni Rhys and I had one of those "what happens after uni" discussions, which never fail to terrify the heck out of me. In Rhys' case, his parents are moving away in the summer, and he'll have finished his degree, so will need to find a place to live, a job, etc., etc. My reaction was pretty much along the "Oh no!! What are you going to do?!" line (transference, obviously, since this is what my reaction would be like if I no longer had the possibility of living with my family.) But of course, I'm an adult now and should be considerably more prepared for this sort of thing than I am. But the truth is, once I finish this degree, I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life.

I'm already starting to feel a little bit lost. :(

Ok, a couple of movies I've seen recently...

L.A. Confidential - Brilliant, brilliant movie; one of the best I've seen. The character writing was so perfect - I loved Russell Crowe's and Guy Pearce's characters so much, and all of the characters are so full of dimensions. The story is gripping, and the way in which it's told works brilliantly. This is a great example of a movie that allows the characters to drive the story, rather than the opposite. Another movie that I could rave about how great it was for ages, but won't - just a flawless, unbelievable movie.

All About Eve - This is the first Bette Davies movie I've seen, and I thought it was fantastic. Really well constructed story, brilliant performances (Bette Davis rocked, and I definitely need to see more of her movies, and I thought George Sanders and Anne Baxter were outstanding as well), and the dialogue was great. Definitely one of my favourite old movies.

After watching that I got a call inviting me to see a band called McLusky. Although the few tracks of theirs that I'd heard on CD I hadn't liked (they were one of the bands that most of my friends were crazy about and I was critical of.) I really felt like a night out though, and there was no way I was going to be allowed on the net all night, and I wanted to change my sleeping pattern to staying up late instead of going to bed early every night, so I went to see them. And I take back every bad thing I've ever said about them. They were outstanding! I didn't know any of the songs, and that seemed to make it better for this gig, because at the same time as being at a live gig watching a great band, there was all the excitement of discovering new music for the first time, similar to the feelings I get on first listening to a great album. We had to leave a few songs early to avoid missing the last bus/train (taxis are expensive), so I definitely need to see them live again! Being played in a small venue the gig had a really good, intimate atmosphere. One of the band mentioned how disappointed he was that Family Guy was no more, within a couple of songs one of the audience had got up on stage to tell everyone, including the band, that because of DVD sales there will be more Family Guy getting made. Just cracked me up to have this type of thing going on in a gig.

The backing bands varied. Sammo Hung were a Yeah Yeah Yeah's esque band, with a mix of good and bad songs, overall a really good opening act. The second 'artist', Brave Captain, was just one guy and his laptop, making really boring mellow electronic dance music. The transitions were awful, there was no melody or energy to it at all, but he went so far past bad into 'so bad it's good'; me, Rhys and Jake were in stitches throughout the way-too-long set. That served the purpose of actually making me excited to be seeing McLusky. Who, as I've already said, exceeded all my expectations.

In addition to writing the majority of my essay on Sunday, I watched Harold And Maude. Really loved it (I seem to be enjoying every movie I see this week!) Reallu uplifting, clever, different to any movie I've seen before, and had some laugh-out-loud scenes (the "traitor! commie!" scene for one, and the scene where Harold's mother is filling out his questionnaire could have gone on for another 10 minutes and I'd still be laughing!) Cat Stevens' soundtrack was absolutely perfect for the movie as well. Yup, loved this one.

Trust this for luck. Had an Ethics lecture yesterday, and I really enjoyed the subject, had my own opinions on it, talked a lot in the post-lecture tutorial (which I hardly ever do) and wouldn't have minded writing an essay on it. *sigh* Why couldn't this lecture had come one week earlier?

Before the lecture I went to see Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself in the cinema. Good movie, lots of really funny parts. It gets a little depressing at times (in line with the title, but the movie is actually a comedy), and it won't make my Top 20 or anything, but still good. Wilbur's character worked especially well, he was not a nice guy, selfish, arrogant, and essentially dislikeable, but had a certain something that stopped me from hating him. Decent movie.

After my lecture I went to see Spun, which was brilliant, despite having problems. It used the fast-paced, multi-edit technique that can go really, really wrong if it's not used right. In fact, this is officially the film with the most edits in. That in itself worked, I think. Rather than going for any subtelty at all the film was so in-your-face from the first minute and didn't slow down at all until it ended. It also used some bits of animation and distorted effects, not as cleverly as Natural Born Killers did, but perfect for a theme where every single character was on methamphetamine from the beginning. Some of the scenes were a lot more graphic than I expected them to be, and I was cringing and turning my head a lot. Plus, shaking a lot. Every time anyone snorts or injects drugs in movies (and presumably in real life as well), my nerves go all weird. And they snorted a heck of a lot of drugs in this one. Brittany Murphy rocked (as she always does) and John Leguizamo and Mickey Rourke were outstanding too - the entire cast was good actually, a thoroughly convincing performance of being on these drugs. Notably, all the characters were pathetic, there wasn't a hint of optimism or upliftingness about a single scene in the movie. For a message as simple as "crystal meth = bad", the movie couldn't have got it across better. A fairly unpleasant movie, but still a really great one, I though.

In the night I watched Romeo + Juliet with my brothers. Great movie. (tenik, I've loved all the movies you've recommended to me. It's just The Fifth Element I have left to see now, which will take ages because of the damaged DVD. *sigh*) I've still not read the play, but I was very pleased that by little brothers (9 and 10) know the story a lot better than I do! Baz Luhrmann's directing is so stylish, and dazzling, and pretty, and again with the fast editing. Moulin Rouge! is one of my favourite movies, and a lot of the things about what made that movie look so amazing were present here as well. Really great.

I have 4 more episode of 24 to watch now, which I'm looking forward to. And an essay to write (after the episodes of 24 of course!) There were other things I wanted to babble about, but I've forgotten what they were. Later in the week perhaps.