Ah, long time no post *rolls eyes*. Fortunately my life isn't terribly interesting, so you haven't missed anything.
I went and saw Milk on Saturday with my mother and I have to tell the truth here, it was a bit tear inducing (even though we all know how it ends). If you fall into any of the GLBTQI categories and you haven't yet seen the movie, I strongly suggest that you shell out a few bucks and go and see it. I promise it'll be worth it. You know, Sean Penn's an ugly bugger, but you forget about that during the movie - he fades away behind Harvey Milk and that in itself is a real treat; I'm glad he won the Oscar for best actor.
You know, that just reminded me of this conversation I had with a customer. She's an awesome woman who is a member of the leather community and marched in the very first Mardi Gras in 1978 (that old lot are known as 78ers). Anyway, we got to talking about the movie before I'd seen it and she was saying that it's kind of a downer that us (the younger queer generation) take it all for granted - that we don't appreciate the hardships of the police abuse and the riots and things like that. I told her that I'm quite well read on queer history (and not just in this country), but I also thanked her. I told her that if it wasn't for the politically minded and open people like Harvey Milk, and if it wasn't for the masses of people begging to be set free, and if it wasn't for the 78ers and everyone like them who had to fight, then we wouldn't be able to take it all for granted...We're in a position now where we can walk hand in hand with our significant others and we don't have to be afraid for our lives (largely). Massive strides have been made to get the queer community to be treated like everyone else...We're "normal" now, and it's because of them. And I'm fiercely proud of that.
Anyway...That's enough about that.
We visited our favourite bookshops (again) and I, as usual, didn't come away empty-handed. I bought a biography of Oscar Wilde, which I've been looking for for an age, and I also bought The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker, another book to add to my growing collection of texts on linguistics. It's about Pinker's theory that the speech is instinctive and it seems that no matter the nationality or environment of a child, he/she will begin to speak at the same time as all other infants, which means that children don't need to be taught to speak - they'll do it by themselves, they just need to be taught about the rules of speech.
Saturday arvo we went over to dad's for the rest of the weekend. Yesterday we went out to Sydney Olympic Park (now almost completely deserted - what a waste of money) to see if we could rent some bikes or something as advertised on their website (I wanted to ride a tandem bicycle which I called a "twocycle" for the rest of the day), but apparently they don't do that anymore. So we wound up hanging about, looking at some ridiculous display about frogs in a brickpit (don't even ask what the hell that was about) and playing some games of Chess on one of those big Chess sets. Mi padre and I played three games and I won the first one. A small victory, but I was very proud.
During playing those three games of Chess, I got rather badly sunburned on the back of my neck and, bizarrely, on my arms. Those parts of my anatomy are a dark and glowy red. I feel like I've been microwaved.
Today I did nothing. I read some more of my Oscar biography (a lovely read) and watched TV.
Tomorrow I will be going to Liverpool, I think, and seeing The Unborn. I might be too terrified to sit through the whole thing, so I'm going on tight-arse Tuesday when the tickets are cheaper, lol. I have to pick up some batteries, a couple of notebooks for my courses and some new pens. And lunch. And maybe another book :P
xox
EDIT: I've just read about four reviews for The Unborn, each of them proclaiming it to be the worst movie of the year...And quite possibly the worst movie ever made. I think I might rethink my movie choice for tomorrow, lol. Even if it is tight-arse Tuesday, I don't want my movie-going experience to be a total failure, like it was when I went and saw Stuck On You *groans*.
I went and saw Milk on Saturday with my mother and I have to tell the truth here, it was a bit tear inducing (even though we all know how it ends). If you fall into any of the GLBTQI categories and you haven't yet seen the movie, I strongly suggest that you shell out a few bucks and go and see it. I promise it'll be worth it. You know, Sean Penn's an ugly bugger, but you forget about that during the movie - he fades away behind Harvey Milk and that in itself is a real treat; I'm glad he won the Oscar for best actor.
You know, that just reminded me of this conversation I had with a customer. She's an awesome woman who is a member of the leather community and marched in the very first Mardi Gras in 1978 (that old lot are known as 78ers). Anyway, we got to talking about the movie before I'd seen it and she was saying that it's kind of a downer that us (the younger queer generation) take it all for granted - that we don't appreciate the hardships of the police abuse and the riots and things like that. I told her that I'm quite well read on queer history (and not just in this country), but I also thanked her. I told her that if it wasn't for the politically minded and open people like Harvey Milk, and if it wasn't for the masses of people begging to be set free, and if it wasn't for the 78ers and everyone like them who had to fight, then we wouldn't be able to take it all for granted...We're in a position now where we can walk hand in hand with our significant others and we don't have to be afraid for our lives (largely). Massive strides have been made to get the queer community to be treated like everyone else...We're "normal" now, and it's because of them. And I'm fiercely proud of that.
Anyway...That's enough about that.
We visited our favourite bookshops (again) and I, as usual, didn't come away empty-handed. I bought a biography of Oscar Wilde, which I've been looking for for an age, and I also bought The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker, another book to add to my growing collection of texts on linguistics. It's about Pinker's theory that the speech is instinctive and it seems that no matter the nationality or environment of a child, he/she will begin to speak at the same time as all other infants, which means that children don't need to be taught to speak - they'll do it by themselves, they just need to be taught about the rules of speech.
Saturday arvo we went over to dad's for the rest of the weekend. Yesterday we went out to Sydney Olympic Park (now almost completely deserted - what a waste of money) to see if we could rent some bikes or something as advertised on their website (I wanted to ride a tandem bicycle which I called a "twocycle" for the rest of the day), but apparently they don't do that anymore. So we wound up hanging about, looking at some ridiculous display about frogs in a brickpit (don't even ask what the hell that was about) and playing some games of Chess on one of those big Chess sets. Mi padre and I played three games and I won the first one. A small victory, but I was very proud.
During playing those three games of Chess, I got rather badly sunburned on the back of my neck and, bizarrely, on my arms. Those parts of my anatomy are a dark and glowy red. I feel like I've been microwaved.
Today I did nothing. I read some more of my Oscar biography (a lovely read) and watched TV.
Tomorrow I will be going to Liverpool, I think, and seeing The Unborn. I might be too terrified to sit through the whole thing, so I'm going on tight-arse Tuesday when the tickets are cheaper, lol. I have to pick up some batteries, a couple of notebooks for my courses and some new pens. And lunch. And maybe another book :P
xox
EDIT: I've just read about four reviews for The Unborn, each of them proclaiming it to be the worst movie of the year...And quite possibly the worst movie ever made. I think I might rethink my movie choice for tomorrow, lol. Even if it is tight-arse Tuesday, I don't want my movie-going experience to be a total failure, like it was when I went and saw Stuck On You *groans*.