Stufflogging
Mar. 4th, 2009 11:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodygranuaileWoo, this is pathetic. I'm on Spring Break and it's barely midnight and I am so ready for bed.
I blame the steam room at Mom's gym. Although perhaps "blame" is not the right word, because that would imply the possibility of negative feelings towards a steam room. Which is so not the case. But it's definitely got me all nice and relaxed. Mmmmmmmm.
I feel like I have nothing to read. Which is not the case, it's just that I didn't bring any fluffy reading home with me because I have a bunch of stuff to read for school, that I don't really want to. (E.g., I have to read Ernst Cassirer's "Language and Myth," AGAIN. Argh.) And I have an oral presentation to prepare for when I get back, but I don't really feel like doing that either. And then all the stuff in my TBR pile that's at home and not at school got left at home because it's almost all nonfiction, which is kind of not what I'm in the mood for.
Luckily, I have plenty to watch... the second season of Dexter, the last season of the Sopranos, and a couple of Netflix movies, not to mention the latest episode of BSG whenever it finally goes online.
Now, as to what I've actually finished:
Making Money, Terry Pratchett: the newest Discworld book, finally out in paperback, second installment in the Moist von Lipwig subseries (meaning sequel to Going Postal). Seriously, only Sir PTerry can make a book about banking this funny. For once, the plot has easily distinguishable "villain" characters instead of Consequences Of Things Which Will Bring About Attacks By Many-Tentacled Things From The Dungeon Dimensions, which was kind of nice, especially since the Lavishes are still more hilarious than evil. And they still only drive the directly bank-related plot, having nothing to do with golems, forgery,necromancy Postmortem Communications, or any of the other subplots, because PTerry does not like having Good Guys Versus Bad Guys. Which is good, because anyone catering to notions of good guys being good and bad guys being bad would never be able to give us Lord Vetinari. And Lord Vetinari is awesome. And there is lots of Lord Vetinari in this one. (Multiple Lord Vetinaris! An entire psych ward full of them!)
There is also the Watch, even though it's not a Watch book, which I always find weird. So much of the series is from Sam Vimes' POV that I always find it kind of bizarre to see Vimes from someone else's perspective when you can't read his thought processes, and it's doubly bizarre to get him from someone who doesn't like him very much (which Moist doesn't). It's also weird to be reminded that not everyone knows as much about the Watch as a Watch-subseries reader does, like that most of Ankh-Morpork doesn't know who the werewolf is.
These later books being very, um, "continuity-bound" (this seems to be the popular way of saying that Discworld has gotten Fully Realized to the point of being very complicated, and you'd better have read the earlier stuff already), there are appearances of many old friends, including but not limited to: Unseen University and its inhabitants (including the Librarian, Ponder Stibbons, and Hex), golems and the entire plot of Feet of Clay, Mrs. Cake the medium (who is sometimes a small), the abovementioned Watchmen, an Igor, and the clowns' guild, including the return of Dr. Whiteface (THERE IS A CLOWN GUILD WEDDING. IT IS AWESOME). New friends include a very old lady who lives entirely off gin, a very small dog who is Chairman of the Bank, a womanizing three-hundred-year-old ghost of a necromancer, and a mad economist who creates an Economic Model of the city's finances that is so accurate it has voodoo properties.
I am going to be extremely sad when PTerry gets too Alzheimers-y to keep writing, because this is about the only series ever that consistently gets better as it goes along instead of running out of ideas and starting to suck.
On the vampire front, I read Dead as a Doornail because I needed to see what happened with the Eric/Sookie aftermath, which was much more hilarious than the plot (the plot involved the werewolves. Harris' werewolves are a pain in the ass. Sigh). Also there was a vampire pirate bartender. His name was Charles. He was my favorite new character, partly because he was a vampire pirate bartender and partly because he was the only male in the book who didn't hit on Sookie (because he was a GAY VAMPIRE PIRATE BARTENDER. It just doesn't get any better than that).
Switching media: I finally got around to seeing the movie Freaks, which was way overdue. (Freaks is where the Ramones got their "Gabba gabba hey" chant from, it being a variant on the wedding scene "Gooba gabba, we accept her, one of us" chant, which is fairly famous amongst people who watch really weird movies.) Freaks is completely adorable, which is only partly because half the main characters are little people. Venus and Phroso the clown are big people and are pretty adorable too. Basic plot: VENUS (a "Decent Circus People" girl, though I'm not sure what she does) breaks up with the strongman, HERCULES, who is an asshole, and starts dating PHROSO instead, because Phroso is awesome. HERCULES then starts seeing CLEOPATRA, the bitchy diva trapeze artist. They keep this secret so the CLEOPATRA can seduce HANS, a midget with an extremely large fortune. HANS' fiancee FRIEDA is worried about Cleopatra's intentions (besides being upset that Hans left her). Cleopatra poisons Hans so he becomes ill. Assorted sideshow freaks find out about Hercules and Cleopatra's dastardly plan and exact creative vengeance upon Cleopatra (I will not spoil it but it involves a bunch of people with very deformed limbs who work in a circus apparently all being MASTER surgeons.)
The best thing about Freaks is, however, the cast of freaks. They are not played by actors, they are actual sideshow freaks (I'm not sure what the politically correct term for them is, apparently it actually was "freak" in the thirties). There is a dude who looks like Samuel L Jackson, except with no arms and no legs, and he can roll himself and light a cigarette using just his lips and nose. There is a guy with no legs and a shortened torso but normal-length arms who walks around on his hands, and a girl with no arms who uses her feet as nimbly as most people use their hands. There is an actual bearded lady (I'm pretty sure it's not just a dude in a dress). There is a pair of conjoined twins, played by actual conjoined twins, who have dating woes in that one twin does not like the other twin's fiance. (There was also a character named Josephine Joseph who was supposedly "half-man half-woman," but this pretty much just seemed to mean that half her hair was kept short and half was long and curled, one eyebrow was plucked and painted and the other wasn't, etc. Apparently it is unknown if Josephine Joseph was a hermaphrodite or just a feminine-looking man in real life.) A lot of the freaks were just unfortunately deformedly-proportioned people, but some of them were seriously cool.
I don't really have much to say about the fifth season of the Sopranos, since I started it a while ago and it's taken me ages to get through it, except THEY KILLED MY TWO FAVORITE CHARACTERS, AUGH. I know Adriana getting whacked was such big news that I'd heard about it before I actually started watching the show, but I was still upset, because I really loved her FBI subplot. And I knew Tony B/Steve Buscemi was going to die because I'd actually seem random bits and pieces of this season when it was on television (there was a marathon on HBO four years ago when I was in Miami for Christmas, and they were on season 5 the day I was sick), and this included the scene where Tony S shoots Tony B. It was kind of weird watching the season and haven sudden "Hey wait, I've seen that bit!" moments from years and years ago (apparently I'd seen part of Carmela's dad's party, because I remembered the guest who was allergic to tomatoes and how much it must suck to be a Jersey Italian allergic to tomatoes, and I'd also seen the bit where Tony B loses his temper and beats his Korean boss up for mispronouncing "West Caldwell"). This season also featured the single longest dream sequence in the history of The Sopranos, which is saying a lot, since Tony's bizarre dreams are a huge part of the psychology of the show. It was kind of exhausting to watch, although I did get really excited when his teeth started falling out at the dinner table, because that's my recurring dream.
Wasn't sure how I felt about Tony and Carmela getting back together; it seemed kinda random. Oh well.
Anyway, now I'm seriously exhausted, and tomorrow I have dense mythicolinguistics texts to reread (joy) and possibly Dexter to watch, if I'm good, so I'm going to bed.
I blame the steam room at Mom's gym. Although perhaps "blame" is not the right word, because that would imply the possibility of negative feelings towards a steam room. Which is so not the case. But it's definitely got me all nice and relaxed. Mmmmmmmm.
I feel like I have nothing to read. Which is not the case, it's just that I didn't bring any fluffy reading home with me because I have a bunch of stuff to read for school, that I don't really want to. (E.g., I have to read Ernst Cassirer's "Language and Myth," AGAIN. Argh.) And I have an oral presentation to prepare for when I get back, but I don't really feel like doing that either. And then all the stuff in my TBR pile that's at home and not at school got left at home because it's almost all nonfiction, which is kind of not what I'm in the mood for.
Luckily, I have plenty to watch... the second season of Dexter, the last season of the Sopranos, and a couple of Netflix movies, not to mention the latest episode of BSG whenever it finally goes online.
Now, as to what I've actually finished:
Making Money, Terry Pratchett: the newest Discworld book, finally out in paperback, second installment in the Moist von Lipwig subseries (meaning sequel to Going Postal). Seriously, only Sir PTerry can make a book about banking this funny. For once, the plot has easily distinguishable "villain" characters instead of Consequences Of Things Which Will Bring About Attacks By Many-Tentacled Things From The Dungeon Dimensions, which was kind of nice, especially since the Lavishes are still more hilarious than evil. And they still only drive the directly bank-related plot, having nothing to do with golems, forgery,
There is also the Watch, even though it's not a Watch book, which I always find weird. So much of the series is from Sam Vimes' POV that I always find it kind of bizarre to see Vimes from someone else's perspective when you can't read his thought processes, and it's doubly bizarre to get him from someone who doesn't like him very much (which Moist doesn't). It's also weird to be reminded that not everyone knows as much about the Watch as a Watch-subseries reader does, like that most of Ankh-Morpork doesn't know who the werewolf is.
These later books being very, um, "continuity-bound" (this seems to be the popular way of saying that Discworld has gotten Fully Realized to the point of being very complicated, and you'd better have read the earlier stuff already), there are appearances of many old friends, including but not limited to: Unseen University and its inhabitants (including the Librarian, Ponder Stibbons, and Hex), golems and the entire plot of Feet of Clay, Mrs. Cake the medium (who is sometimes a small), the abovementioned Watchmen, an Igor, and the clowns' guild, including the return of Dr. Whiteface (THERE IS A CLOWN GUILD WEDDING. IT IS AWESOME). New friends include a very old lady who lives entirely off gin, a very small dog who is Chairman of the Bank, a womanizing three-hundred-year-old ghost of a necromancer, and a mad economist who creates an Economic Model of the city's finances that is so accurate it has voodoo properties.
I am going to be extremely sad when PTerry gets too Alzheimers-y to keep writing, because this is about the only series ever that consistently gets better as it goes along instead of running out of ideas and starting to suck.
On the vampire front, I read Dead as a Doornail because I needed to see what happened with the Eric/Sookie aftermath, which was much more hilarious than the plot (the plot involved the werewolves. Harris' werewolves are a pain in the ass. Sigh). Also there was a vampire pirate bartender. His name was Charles. He was my favorite new character, partly because he was a vampire pirate bartender and partly because he was the only male in the book who didn't hit on Sookie (because he was a GAY VAMPIRE PIRATE BARTENDER. It just doesn't get any better than that).
Switching media: I finally got around to seeing the movie Freaks, which was way overdue. (Freaks is where the Ramones got their "Gabba gabba hey" chant from, it being a variant on the wedding scene "Gooba gabba, we accept her, one of us" chant, which is fairly famous amongst people who watch really weird movies.) Freaks is completely adorable, which is only partly because half the main characters are little people. Venus and Phroso the clown are big people and are pretty adorable too. Basic plot: VENUS (a "Decent Circus People" girl, though I'm not sure what she does) breaks up with the strongman, HERCULES, who is an asshole, and starts dating PHROSO instead, because Phroso is awesome. HERCULES then starts seeing CLEOPATRA, the bitchy diva trapeze artist. They keep this secret so the CLEOPATRA can seduce HANS, a midget with an extremely large fortune. HANS' fiancee FRIEDA is worried about Cleopatra's intentions (besides being upset that Hans left her). Cleopatra poisons Hans so he becomes ill. Assorted sideshow freaks find out about Hercules and Cleopatra's dastardly plan and exact creative vengeance upon Cleopatra (I will not spoil it but it involves a bunch of people with very deformed limbs who work in a circus apparently all being MASTER surgeons.)
The best thing about Freaks is, however, the cast of freaks. They are not played by actors, they are actual sideshow freaks (I'm not sure what the politically correct term for them is, apparently it actually was "freak" in the thirties). There is a dude who looks like Samuel L Jackson, except with no arms and no legs, and he can roll himself and light a cigarette using just his lips and nose. There is a guy with no legs and a shortened torso but normal-length arms who walks around on his hands, and a girl with no arms who uses her feet as nimbly as most people use their hands. There is an actual bearded lady (I'm pretty sure it's not just a dude in a dress). There is a pair of conjoined twins, played by actual conjoined twins, who have dating woes in that one twin does not like the other twin's fiance. (There was also a character named Josephine Joseph who was supposedly "half-man half-woman," but this pretty much just seemed to mean that half her hair was kept short and half was long and curled, one eyebrow was plucked and painted and the other wasn't, etc. Apparently it is unknown if Josephine Joseph was a hermaphrodite or just a feminine-looking man in real life.) A lot of the freaks were just unfortunately deformedly-proportioned people, but some of them were seriously cool.
I don't really have much to say about the fifth season of the Sopranos, since I started it a while ago and it's taken me ages to get through it, except THEY KILLED MY TWO FAVORITE CHARACTERS, AUGH. I know Adriana getting whacked was such big news that I'd heard about it before I actually started watching the show, but I was still upset, because I really loved her FBI subplot. And I knew Tony B/Steve Buscemi was going to die because I'd actually seem random bits and pieces of this season when it was on television (there was a marathon on HBO four years ago when I was in Miami for Christmas, and they were on season 5 the day I was sick), and this included the scene where Tony S shoots Tony B. It was kind of weird watching the season and haven sudden "Hey wait, I've seen that bit!" moments from years and years ago (apparently I'd seen part of Carmela's dad's party, because I remembered the guest who was allergic to tomatoes and how much it must suck to be a Jersey Italian allergic to tomatoes, and I'd also seen the bit where Tony B loses his temper and beats his Korean boss up for mispronouncing "West Caldwell"). This season also featured the single longest dream sequence in the history of The Sopranos, which is saying a lot, since Tony's bizarre dreams are a huge part of the psychology of the show. It was kind of exhausting to watch, although I did get really excited when his teeth started falling out at the dinner table, because that's my recurring dream.
Wasn't sure how I felt about Tony and Carmela getting back together; it seemed kinda random. Oh well.
Anyway, now I'm seriously exhausted, and tomorrow I have dense mythicolinguistics texts to reread (joy) and possibly Dexter to watch, if I'm good, so I'm going to bed.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 06:17 am (UTC)2.The conjoined twins in Freaks are played by Daisy and Violet Hilton, the subjects of the musical 'Sideshow.' Why yes, I do know lots of random trivia.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 04:14 pm (UTC)2. I think I'd actually heard that before. o.O
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 05:10 pm (UTC)loooove!
one of us!!! one of us!!
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 09:45 pm (UTC)agreed: eric + sookie aftermath is hilarious. eric is awesome. though i'm still ever so fond of bill and will probably always be, eric is definitely a favorite character. he saves the book so many times. especially when you have to read about horrid, disturbing werewolf "traditions" and annoying were-tigers. i cringed over the pages during a lot of werewolf "sex."
gay pirate vampire bartender = a++++
also, i would like to change my major to postmortem communications instead of just communications.