Thank goodness we're "at war" against terrorism

I can't say anything better than what BBC News reported.

Ah, but I'm sure this is biased. We all know what bastards run Amnesty International. (Sarcasm intended, for those who might be impaired in that regard, thanks to G for the linkage.)

Harry Potter is my Star Wars

At my new job, we have dealings with Scholastic, the company that publishes the HP novels. We don't carry them (much to my chagrin, as I probably could have gotten my copy EARLY that way) but they did send us a display to try to entice us to carry it. I made an off-handed comment about how they'd have to guard it from me, and they gave it to me. Whee!

Wasn't I too old when the HP books came out for it to become my new Star Wars? And yet, that's what it's become. I know how many days until the book comes out (actually, it's either 51 or 52, not sure which, but isn't that close enough?) and I found some production stills from the GoF movie on the net a couple of days ago and thought about making one of them my desktop image. I currently have a very cool Escher-homage image from a Fark photoshop contest as my desktop image, which is quite nice, and I'm not sick of looking at it.

How old does the baby have to be before I can buy Harry Potter Legos and such and pass them off as the kid's toys? Probably, say, two. Right? Ah, that's too long. Suck.

I mean, look at this. Lego Sirius Black. Who doesn't want that?

A General Status

In other news, I am sick as a dog.

I never did understand that saying, however. I have seen many dogs in my time, and while I'm sure they are occasionally sick, I don't see where they are sick more than any other creature. Doesn't seem very emblematic to me.

I'm sure it will pass, as these things always do, but boy, do I feel awful.

This baby better not give me any crap in the teenage years. I will totally say, "Do you know how sick I was with you for a good month solid?" (Hopefully not longer than that.) Not that Pavel or Pavelina will care. He/she will roll their eyes at me and sass me anyway. I mean, really. With these genetics?

And there's that fucking Starburst commercial again. How can I be about an inch from vomiting one minute and have an intense need for red Starbursts the next?

Ah, good. It's passed. I want to vomit again. Excellent.

24 Finale

I swear, I would buy a "Jack Lives" t-shirt right now.

How good is it to be wrong about Tony's approximate life span?

Kathy's Top Fifty

My top fifty movies. Yes, I know it's supposed to be 100. I was sweating bullets just trying to get to fifty. I just can't dilute it any more than this. I already have two or three on this list that I could take or leave.

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
3. Blade Runner
4. Woman of the Year
5. Star Wars

Some notes on the top five:

Empire will always reign supreme. I'll never have another moment in my life when I realize I have to wait three long years to find out what will happen to Han Solo. Star Wars held the number two for a long time, but I honestly think the other three movies are more important to me now, and it's not just prequel bitterness or anything.

6. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (for the cinematography, and for Ron and Hermione)
7. Love, Actually (strength of characters...I actually cared what happened)
8. The Dark Knight
   
9. Return of the Jedi
10. Clerks
11. Alien
12. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
13. Stranger Than Fiction
    
14. The Triplets of Belleville
15. Chasing Amy
16. The Cutting Edge

Okay, okay. I realize no one has seen this. But I love it and for reasons known only to me, it got me through my senior recital in college.

17. Field of Dreams (game of catch gets me every time)
18. Tron
19. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
20. Ghost in the Shell
21. Raiders of the Lost Ark
22. Spirited Away
23. Desk Set
24. Pride and Prejudice
    
25. Adam's Rib
26. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
27. Princess Mononoke
28. Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
29. Bull Durham
30. Shrek
31. Pat and Mike
32. Bend it Like Beckham (and I don't even like soccer)
33. Spanglish
34. Sabrina (original)
35. Remains of the Day
36. Emma
37. The Princess Bride (hello, my name is...)
38. The Sixth Sense (because M. Night fooled me)
39. Singin' in the Rain (make 'em laugh)
40. Bicentennial Man (because it made me cry, dammit)
41. This is Spinal Tap
42. Memento
43. The Usual Suspects
44. Rush Hour (had to have Jackie)
45. Dead Poets Society
46. Young Frankenstein (Puttin' on the Ritz)
47. Bringing Up Baby
48. Holiday Inn (pretty much just for the music)
49. Dead Again (modern day homage to film noir)
50. What Dreams May Come (again, because it made me cry, dammit)

Episode III

Oh, dash away if you don't want any spoilers, although it's not like I'm about to rehash the plot or quote any "dialogue". (Picture that I said that with Dr. Evil quotation marks.) But I am about to talk about several points that are clearly spoilers.

I'm just so torn. I'm glad it's over. I'm sorry that there was, of necessity, not as much suspense as there ideally would have been...mostly because there were many people I just plain old knew were going to survive.

The suspense had to be in the hows, not the whats or the whos. I wish the motivations would have been better. I wish I'd felt it more deeply. I wish ass-kickin' Padme from the end of Episode I, the woman who was Leia's mother, hadn't turned out to be such a weepy, oh-hell-I-give-up kind of girl.

I mean, I love Tom more than my own life. More than anything. But if something happened to him, I would hope that I wouldn't just lie down and give up. I might feel like it, but for goodness' sake, if you have two new babies to live for, you don't just give up and die because your man turned himself into a monster, using you as an excuse for doing so.

It just took one thing to make me walk out of there with a quiet smile on my face, and it's John Williams who did it. Baby Leia going to Alderaan with (my favorite piece of music from the original trilogy) Leia's Theme playing underneath, and then morphing to Luke's Theme when Obi-Wan delivers Luke to Owen and Beru.

I think it was Leia who formed one of my earliest ideas of what I might want to be like as a woman, the first idea independent from the women I knew and grew up with, like my mother. How disappointing, in a way, to see the lack of strength Leia apparently came from. Her father was so weak that he was quite easily manipulated into pure evil, and her mother simply shrugged her shoulders and gave up. Maybe that makes Leia all the stronger, all the better for coming from those genetics and managing to kick ass through all three movies.

I don't know. I wish I could encapsulate it. It's over. Maybe that's all I can say right now.

Good Things Happening at the Right Time

It's a small thing, but it represents a bright point in my day.

Yesterday, I was stuck in traffic trying to get to the bike race (as a spectator, of course) from Lynnhaven Mall. Two big accidents worked together to make this 15 minute drive take nearly 50.

One gets rather bored in that time. I pulled out my Final Fantasy VIII CD and put it in, only to find that it is scratched near the fifth track and won't play anything after that. Boo.

Then I read an article on Slashdot today that makes me smile. I will allow myself a $10 budget to download Final Fantasy songs. I think we can afford that, even in these uncertain times.