Mongol was pretty good. It's one of those movies where the good bits are memorable and the bad bits are forgettable. Wonderful scenery and music. Plenty of throat singing, and the hardest 10 year old I've ever seen on the big screen. No falconry, but plenty of horses and camels and desert. The story was very folklore, like it was jumbled together from various tellings that all had different agendas. The closing credits had a heavy metal guitar over them, which made all kind of sense.
The epic movies I like are all built around an impossibly macho figure who generates their own reality field. There are two versions of it, the british imperial (Gandhi, Lawrence, Colonel Nicholson), which involves looking through people, and the chinese imperial (Nameless in Hero, Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Tamujin in this) which involves more hitting. This movie didn't quite work, because the reality field wasn't compelling: you didn't feel why people followed him, it was just sort of a given. The hordes just sort of appeared. (I guess the american version would be Steve McQueen / John Wayne, and entails actual swaggering)
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12:01:04 PM,
Monday 23 June 2008
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Gah. So yesterday I tried a new recipe, and made a really delicious lamb tagine, which I proceeded to have somewhat nasty reaction to. The current theory is that it was the chickpeas. Felt like my throat and lungs were swelling, general digestive rebellion, fun stuff like that. So now I've got 3 servings of good lamb stew I really shouldn't eat. On top of that, I took a benedryl on general principles, so now I'm hung over.
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(14)
09:23:45 AM,
Monday 23 June 2008
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"The Postmaster General quickly issued a regulation forbidding the sending of children in the mail after hearing of those examples."
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(1)
12:22:31 PM,
Sunday 22 June 2008
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It's odd to read a book describing the Khmer Rouge and their apologists, and then realize you had been reading one them on Huffington Post.
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(2)
10:15:22 AM,
Sunday 22 June 2008
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Went kayaking, along the Concord River. Not many birds, except the great blue herons, but we did see both a muskrat and a beaver. The beaver swam alongside us, briefly, close enough to smell, before diving with a slap of it's tail.
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(3)
10:09:33 PM,
Saturday 21 June 2008
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Driving into town, we were merging with another line of traffic, and we were dead even with another black Honda Fit Sport in the next lane, and I had this vision of, well, actually merging with it. I felt like a double image being resolved. I should probably go to sleep.
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(2)
08:41:53 PM,
Friday 20 June 2008
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Ice on Mars. But also? Version control issues on Mars. I really profoundly feel that buggy software engineering shouldn't be the bottleneck when sending spaceships to Mars.
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(1)
02:38:37 PM,
Friday 20 June 2008
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I have successfully purchased and hung drawstring curtains! It hardly required any drilling of holes in the wall at all. Transverse curtain rods are pure genius. I studied it for like an hour, and I still am not entirely sure it isn't magic. Also? I feel culturally out of place in curtain shops. But I can now tell my Fishtailed Swag from my Jabot. It is important to know the enemy.
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(1)
07:13:55 PM,
Thursday 19 June 2008
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Bah, the magazine crew is back. I like bullfrogs better as a sign of summer. Let's see if a No Solicitors sign has any effect.
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(1)
12:18:22 PM,
Thursday 19 June 2008
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respond? (1)
08:37:35 PM, Wednesday 18 June 2008
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08:36:39 PM, Wednesday 18 June 2008
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Am I missing anything important in life by systematically avoiding DC/Marvel comics franchises? Because I really don't dig the whole delusions of grandeur thing. They feel like a distillation of everything distasteful and megalomaniacal about fantasy, combined with an offputting fetishization of violence, and the grotesque body images of the WWF thrown in. Also the thoroughgoing, condescending stupidity of stuff created for the barely literate. Are there any saving graces I'm missing? I can sort of see how people find the bearable, by adopting a sort of camp mindset towards them, but that doesn't seem to change their inner awfulness any.
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(15)
09:04:08 AM,
Wednesday 18 June 2008
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site & script courtesy of Moss
