Fish, Brains, Exile

Well, the weekend has come and gone. Friday, fallenpegasus came over (this is starting to become a regular thing) for fish on friday, and Omaha found a delicious recipe for breaded fillet sandwiches, which we enhanced with tomatoes and basil. Absotively wonderful. We sat around and talked for a while, but not much else.

Saturday was busy. I skipped both the Seattle Linux User's Group meeting and the Cascade Handballer's party, one because it was too far away and the other because I just didn't feel like doing all the prep necessary. Instead, we did housework, mostly vacuuming and dusting and stuff like that. I started on cleaning the lab; that was the big task of the weekend. We were having tonyawinter over for the evening, just for dinner and to discuss the kind of effort we had had to put into changing our water pipes; we discussed permitting, pre-dig utility marking, how to get friends to dig for you, foam-and-plastic jacketed copper for replacement pipes, and how easy or hard it is to solder copper. Omaha made a risotto with beets that, I swear, looked eerily like brains.

I stayed up late and watched Last Exile. I haven't quite figured out what's going on. It seems to be a kind of post-apocalyptic, semi-magickal story set in a very steampunk universe with pre-victorian codes of combat; airships laden with men in redcoats firing steam-powered muskets in rows at each other across a vast open space, the "winner" being the one with the fewest casualties. There's some very odd sensibility going on there. But it's F'ing gorgeous, and someone put a lot of thought into it.

Sunday, I put more work into the lab (calling it an "office" seems silly; my paperwork space is wherever I take my laptop, but I do real work and research down in the lab... not to mention play games), played outdoors for a couple of hours with Kouryou-chan. We practiced batting a ball and pulled up some weeds, both of which she found equally fun. We had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, very retro.

While I was cleaning up, I tried (I tried, I really did) to throw away an authentic 31-floppy-disk collection of Microsoft Office from 1994, since we have the 1998 version on CD and I don't even have a floppy drive. Omaha filched it out of the trashcan, swearing that she could sell it on Ebay. I think she's crazy. Some things simply are trash. I'm very much in the Clean Sweep mode of thinking these days: if I haven't used/worn it for over a year, out it goes. I now have stacks to go to the PC recycler, Twice Sold Tales, and the landfill.

Hero

Sunday night, since tygereclipse was about, Omaha and I chose on the spur of the moment to go see a movie. After pulling up Rotten Tomatoes to get movie times (and I recommend Rotten Tomatoes over Movielink or Fandango) and reviews, and based on fallenpegasus's praise, we decided to go see Hero.

The previews and commercials for Hero suck. There's no other way to put it. The promoters want you to go based on it being a Jet Li film "like Black Mask" or "a wire-work marital arts film "like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". Yes, it's a wuxia film, but it's not either of those. Hero is a heavy movie. It is essentially a dialogue between two people, only one of whom we really know at the beginning of the film, and each tells the other "what happened" (very Rashomon), or what he thinks happened, leading up to the final crisis, which is between the two. But the four characters involved go through emotional upheavals and contortions that leave the watcher feeling battered; it's such a movingly effective film. And the martial arts sequences are pretty damn good. I'm completely sure that I missed the point of the filmmaker's use of color; each battle is backgrounded with a different color-- desert grey, autumn leaf gold, aboreal green, battle red. There's a little CGI silliness that can safely be ignored. Jet Li's not very interesting as an actor, but that's okay; he's completely overshadowed by Tony Leung Chiu Wai, who really takes this film where it should go.

All in all, a very satisfying movie. Visually stunning, and much better written than the previews hint.

Time Does Goatse!

Oh my gods. If you don't know what "goatse" is, don't google for it. Especially don't google for it at work. It's very definitely Not Work Safe.

If you do, tell me: Hov did the cover artist for Time Magazine slip this one past the editors: .

I really want to know.

Holy Franklin/Covey, where did my week go?

Wow. Last week I had very little, this week... Okay, Tuesday it Kouryou-chan's parent orientation night, Wednesday I'm scheduled to go to dinner with friends, Thursday I'm taking Yamaarashi-chan out, Friday is also a night with Yamaarashi-chan, and Saturday we're trekking over to the Foolscap readercon. Yikes.

More Safe For Work...

Gentlesentients, ( What happens when your ass is too small. )