Sunday, January 7, 2007

   Sometimes You Feel Like A Rant, Sometimes You Don't

You know, for some reason I just haven’t felt like updating recently. I think it’s my natural laziness that’s done it ^_^ Eh, it is that time of year, after all. No school, and I only have a part-time job, so I’m just enjoying the relaxed pace. Groovy. In fact, I’ve been gone so long, I didn’t even get to mention what I got for Christmas *gasps* Let’s see, well, I got a card for my computer that lets me watch and record TV, since we have a cable internet connection (sweet!). I also got The Fray CD How to Save a Life, the complete recordings of Robert Johnson (double sweet in all it’s 30’s blues), a bag of dark chocolate truffles, a teapot, a collection of all the Little Nemo comics is a huge hardback book, a handheld label maker, and a whole lot of Borders gift cards (I’ve already spent all of them, too ^_^). Definitely an awesome Christmas. On New Years, I made an appearance at my Grandmother’s for dinner, after which I went over to my friend’s house for her party, where we all stayed up late playing video games ^_^ As for more recent events, today I randomly decided to watch Howl’s Moving Castle, just because I could, and probably because I am still, deep down, just a little depressed at the crappiness of the Eragon movie. I mean, I know the book isn’t perfect, or even destined to be all that well famous a few decades from now, since it tends to traffic in all the fantasy clichés that afflict most American fantasy, but it was still thousands of times better than that damn movie. I need to watch movies like Howl’s Moving Castle to remind me that all hope is not lost. That somehow, even when a movie adaptation of a book removes or revises major plot points in a story, it still doesn’t have to suck (in contrast to Eragon, which actually keep a great many major plot points, but still managed to #@$* everything up around them). Anyway, as I was watching the movie today, my introspective nature kicked in again, and helped to remind me why Diana Wynne Jones is such a kick-ass writer. I mean, she can create some of the best characters. They usually all have some tremendous flaws and yet you still love them anyway. For example, in the book Sophie is nosy, bossy, and constantly does things without thinking them all the way through. Michael (“Markl”), who’s actually a teenager in the book, is a bit of a push-over and tends to freeze up in a crisis. Of course, neither of them is as hilariously flawed as Howl himself. He’s selfish, cowardly, egotistical, and falls in love with pretty girls at the drop of a hat, only to lose interest in them as soon as they start to like him. Oh, and he’s Welsh *hahaha* (All joking aside, he really is. In the book, the black panel on the door isn’t some kind of warp portal; it actually leads to a parallel world that’s supposed to be our own. Jones is big on parallel dimensions). It’s all very funny. Of course, some of the worst character flaws are resolved in the story, but her characters are still very realistic in that for all that they change, they still stay exactly the same (i.e. in the sequel, Howl calls his own fairly newborn son ugly, after which Sophie promptly yells at him). Anyway, enough rambling about Diana Wynne Jones and her witty British humour. In anime news, YouTube seems to have done some more clearing out of copyrighted material, and I can no longer find the episodes of Spiral there anymore. It’s not that bad. I was only looking for them to see if they had been deleted, since I’ve already watched the whole series. Oh well, c’est la vie. What tends to surprise me, though, is the fact that there are still several American shows that haven’t been touched. I can still find several episodes of Supernatural on YouTube. Hmmm, perplexing. I guess WGN hasn’t complained yet. Anyway, I’m off to go frolic or something. Later. -Quotation of the Day- "'Mrs. Fairfax is a family friend,' said Sophie, 'How was I to know you would be there too?' 'You have an instinct, Sophie, that's how,' said Howl. 'Nothing is safe from you. If I were to court a girl who lived on an iceberg in the middle of an ocean, sooner or later - probably sooner - I'd look up to see you swooping overhead on a broomstick. In fact, by now I'd be disappointed in you if I didn’t see you.' 'Are you off to the iceberg today?' Sophie retorted." -Howl's Moving Castle- (I know I’ve used this quotation before, but I love it)

Comments (3)