(via)
A shiny nose, Rudolph had….
Every animated movie, ever. Or something like that.
I found this at Roger’s blog, and you’d better believe I’m doing it!
The Rules:
– X what you saw
– O what you haven’t finished/seen or saw sizable portions
– Bold what you loved
– Italicize what you disliked/hated
– Leave unchanged if neutral
CLASSIC DISNEY
——————————-
[X] 101 Dalmatians (1961)
[X] Alice in Wonderland (1951)
[X] Bambi (1942)
[X] Cinderella (1950)
[X] Dumbo (1941)
[X] Fantasia (1940)
[X] Lady and the Tramp (1955)
[X] Mary Poppins (1964)
[X] Peter Pan (1953)
[X] Pinocchio (1940)
[X] Sleeping Beauty (1959)
[X] Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
[X] Song of the South (1946) (Not a movie in this bunch that I don’t love, except the first two, which are OK. Even Song of the South, although when I saw it I was nine and was blissfully unaware of the racial tones. I want to see it again and find out how it holds up…but Disney refuses to release the film in the US. Peter Pan is my favorite classic Disney film, by the way.)
DISNEY’S DARK AGE
——————————-
[X] The Aristocats (1970) (It’s an OK flick, but you want to talk about some ethnic stereotyping, check out the Siamese cat. I mean…check out what happens at the 2:50 mark of this song from the movie. Whoa.)
[o] The Black Cauldron (1985)
[X] The Fox and the Hound (1981)
[X] The Great Mouse Detective (1986) (Not a bad movie. A fun adventure.)
[X] The Jungle Book (1967) (I have never liked this movie. Mainly because I can’t stand Mowgli and end up rooting for Shere Khan.)
[X] The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)
[ ] Oliver and Company (1986)
[ ] Pete’s Dragon (1977)
[X] The Rescuers (1977) (I love this one, even with its 1970s era static-background, lazy animation.)
[X] Robin Hood (1973)
[ ] The Sword In The Stone (1963): Uh…Walt was still around for this one…
There’s some good stuff in here. And some not-so-good stuff.
THE DISNEY RENAISSANCE
——————————-
[X] Aladdin (1992)
[X] Beauty and the Beast (1991) (I adore both of these films. The Girlfriend (now The Wife) and I saw them in first release. We saw Aladdin five times.)
[ ] A Goofy Movie (1995)
[X] Hercules (1997)
[X] The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) (Both of these seem terribly underrated to me.)
[X] The Lion King (1994)
[X] The Little Mermaid (1989) (And both of these seem terribly overrated to me.)
[X] Mulan (1998)
[X] Pocahontas (1995) (Both of these are just kind of “meh”. Mulan tends to be prized by film music fans because it has a score by Jerry Goldsmith. Not that good of a Goldsmith score, but there are people for whom Goldsmith can do no wrong at all.)
[X] The Rescuers Down Under (1990) (Not a bad adventure flick.)
[X] Tarzan (1999) (Love this.)
DISNEY’S MODERN AGE
——————————-
[X] Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) (I love this one! It’s such a fun adventure story.)
[ ] Bolt (2008)
[X] Brother Bear (2003) (This could have been so much better.)
[ ] Chicken Little (2005)
[O] Dinosaur (2000) (A stunning opening sequence, followed by ninety minutes of “meh”.)
[X] The Emperor’s New Groove (2000) (Absolutely great. The Disney people were channeling the spirit of Chuck Jones on this movie.)
[X] Fantasia 2000 (2000)
[X] Home on the Range (2004)
[X] Lilo & Stitch (2002): Watched this the other day for about the fourth time, and it still holds up for me. (All fine films. Even Home on the Range, which was goofy fun.)
[ ] Meet the Robinsons (2007)
[X] Treasure Planet (2002): There’s some nifty stuff here, but the idea doesn’t work as well as it could have. Author Philip Reaves did much the same kind of thing in a series of “Victorian space operas” a few years later.)
PIXAR
——————————-
[X] A Bug’s Life (1998) Not a huge fan of this.
[X] Cars (2006) Well…I like a lot of the individual stuff in this movie, even if there’s something subtly creepy and unbelievable about the world the movie creates.
[X] Finding Nemo (2003) My favorite Pixar film.
[X] The Incredibles (2004)
[X] Monsters Inc. (2001)
[X] Ratatouille (2007)
[X] Toy Story (1995)
[X] Toy Story 2 (1999)
[ ] Toy Story 3 (2010)
[X] Wall-E (2008)
[X] Up (2009) Both of these suffered the same fault: “First-halfitis”. Wonderful first halves that were followed by conventional, dull second halves.
DON BLUTH
——————————-
[ ] All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989)
[ ] An American Tail (1986)
[ ] An American Tail: Fieval Goes West (1991)
[ ] Anastasia (1997) (Always wanted to see this one.)
[ ] The Land Before Time (1988)
[ ] The Pebble and the Penguin (1995)
[ ] Rock-a-Doodle (1991)
[X] The Secret of NIMH (1982) I love this one!
[ ] Thumbelina (1994)
[X] Titan AE (2000) This movie sure disappeared into a black hole, didn’t it? But I liked it.
[ ] A Troll in Central Park (1994)
CLAYMATION AND STOP-MOTION
——————————-
[ ] The Adventures of Mark Twain (1986)
[X] Chicken Run (2000) Just great!
[X] Corpse Bride (2005)
[X] James and the Giant Peach (1996)
[O] The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
[ ] Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) I desperately need to see this.
[ ] Coraline (2009) This too.
(I changed the category header here; it was just “claymation”, and that’s not true of each of these films.)
CGI GLUT
——————————-
[X] Antz (1998) I loved this, considerably more than A Bug’s Life, which came out roughly the same time.
[ ] Bee Movie (2007)
[X] Happy Feet (2006) This movie makes me want to club baby seals. I HATE it.
[X] Ice Age (2002)
[X] Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) Love the first; the second is “meh”.
[ ] Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) I’ve heard good things about this one….
[O] Kung Fu Panda (2008) I should watch the whole thing; I was kind of amused by the parts I saw.
[ ] Madagascar (2005)
[ ] Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)
[X] Monster House (2006) Fun flick.
[ ] Over the Hedge (2006)
[X] The Polar Express (2004) I love this movie…even the supposedly “dead eyes” of the characters don’t bother me. We watch this every year.
[O] Robots (2005): I liked this one more than I probably should have.
[ ] A Shark’s Tale (2004)
[X] Shrek (2001)
[X] Shrek 2 (2004)
[X] Shrek The Third (2007) Love the first, love the second even more, kinda liked the third.
[ ] Shrek Forever After (2010)
[X] Monsters vs. Aliens (2009) I liked this one more than I thought I would.
IMPORTS
——————————-
[ ] Arabian Knight (aka The Thief and the Cobbler) (1995)
[X] The Last Unicorn (1982) Love it!
[ ] Light Years (1988)
[ ] The Triplets of Belleville (2003)
[ ] Persepolis (2007) But I read the brilliant, brilliant comic.
[ ] Waltz With Bashir (2008)
[ ] Watership Down (1978)
[ ] When the Wind Blows (1988)
[ ] Wonderful Days (2003)
[ ] Yellow Submarine (1968)
Heavens, I need to see some of these!
STUDIO GHIBLI/MIYAZAKI
——————————-
[X] The Cat Returns (2002)
[ ] Grave of the Fireflies (1988) I’ve had this on DVD for six years or so and still haven’t watched it. Don’t know what I’m waiting for.
[X] Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) When I finally saw this, I couldn’t figure out why it was so roundly disliked by other Miyazaki fans.
[X] Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
[X] Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986) Both fantastic films.
[ ] Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979)
[ ] My Neighbors The Yamadas (1999)
[X] My Neighbor Totoro (1993) SO good!
[X] Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984): I watched this a couple of years ago, and I’ll be damned if I remember anything about it.
[ ] Only Yesterday (1991)
[ ] Pom Poko (Tanuki War) (1994)
[X] Porco Rosso (1992)
[X] Princess Mononoke (1999)
[X] Spirited Away (2002) Three amazing films…and none has anything in common with the other. Miyazaki’s diversity of storytelling is amazing to behold.
[ ] Whisper of the Heart (1995)
[X] Ponyo (2009) Wonderful.
Most of these feature wonderful music by Joe Hisaishi.
SATOSHI KON
——————————-
[X] Millennium Actress (2001)
[ ] Paprika (2006): Visually lovely, but I found it hard to follow.
[ ] Perfect Blue (1999)
[ ] Tokyo Godfathers (2003)
SHINKAI MAKOTO
——————————-
[ ] She and Her Cat (1999)
[X] Voices of a Distant Star (2001) Deeply haunting film…and it’s only 25 minutes long.
[ ] The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004)
[ ] 5 Centimeters per Second (2007)
OTHER ANIME FILMS
——————————-
[ ] Akira (1989)
[ ] Angel’s Egg (1985)
[ ] Appleseed (2004)
[ ] Appleseed: Ex Machina (2007)
[ ] Arcadia of My Youth (U.S. Title – Vengeance of the Space Pirate) (1982)
[ ] Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2003)
[ ] The Dagger of Kamui (U.S. Title – Revenge of the Ninja Warrior) (1985)
[ ] Dirty Pair: Project Eden (1987)
[ ] End of Evangelion (1997)
[ ] Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone (2007)
[ ] Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance (2009)
[ ] Fist of the North Star (1986)
[ ] Galaxy Express 999 (1979)
[ ] Ghost in the Shell (1996)
[ ] Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004)
[ ] The Girl Who Lept Through Time (2006)
[ ] Lensman (1984)
[ ] Macross: Do You Remember Love (U.S. Title – Clash of the Bionoids) (1984)
[ ] Memories (1995)
[ ] Metropolis (2001)
[ ] Neo-Tokyo (1986)
[ ] Night on the Galactic Railroad (1985)
[ ] Ninja Scroll (1993)
[ ] Patlabor the Movie (1989)
[ ] The Professional: Golgo 13 (1983)
[ ] Project A-ko (1986)
[ ] Robot Carnival (1987)
[ ] Robotech: The Shadow Chronicle (2006)
[ ] Silent Möbius (1991)
[ ] The Sky Crawlers (2008)
[ ] Space Adventure Cobra (1982)
[ ] Steamboy (2004)
[ ] Sword of the Stranger (2007)
[ ] Unico and the Island of Magic (1983)
[ ] Urotsukidoji: The Movie (1987)
[ ] Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer (1984)
[ ] Urusei Yatsura: Only You (1982)
[ ] Vampire Hunter D (1985)
[ ] Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust (2000)
[ ] Wings of Honneamise: Royal Space Force (1987)
Wow. I need to see some of these. A lot of these.
CARTOONS FOR GROWN-UPS
——————————-
[ ] American Pop (1981)
[ ] The Animatrix (2003)
[X] Beavis & Butthead Do America (1996) Yeah, we went to see this. And we liked it. So there!
[ ] Cool World (1992)
[ ] Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)
[ ] Final Fantasy: Advent Children (2005)
[ ] Fire & Ice (1983)
[ ] Fritz the Cat (1972)
[ ] Halo Legends (2009)
[X] Heavy Metal (1981) So cheesy! It still appeals to my inner 15-year-old kid. And a great score by Elmer Bernstein.
[ ] Heavy Metal 2000 (2000)
[ ] Hey Good Lookin’ (1982)
[ ] Lady Death (2004)
[ ] A Scanner Darkly (2006)
[ ] Sita Sings the Blues (2008)
[ ] South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999) I want to see this.
[ ] Street Fight (Coonskin) (1975)
[ ] Waking Life (2001)
OTHER ANIMATED MOVIES
——————————-
[ ] The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)
[ ] Animal Farm (1954)
[ ] Animalympics (1980)
[ ] Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon The Movie (2007): I watched about half of this; what is hilarious for 15 minutes proved to be tiresome for almost an hour and a half.
[ ] Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (2000)
[ ] Batman: Gotham Knight (2008)
[ ] Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010)
[ ] The Brave Little Toaster (1988)
[ ] Bravestarr: The Movie (1988)
[ ] Cats Don’t Dance (1997)
[X] Care Bears: The Movie (1985) Ahhh, The Daughter’s Care-Bear phase! To be honest, I never even found the Care Bears all that annoying. No idea why.
[X] Charlotte’s Web (1973)
[ ] Fern Gully (1992)
[ ] G.I. Joe: The Movie (1987)
[ ] Gobots: Battle of the Rock Lords (1986)
[ ] Green Lantern: First Flight (2009)
[ ] He-Man & She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword (1985)
[X] The Hobbit (1977) It really isn’t bad. Here’s an old post about it.
[X] The Iron Giant (1999) Every bit as great as its reputation. It’s the Shawshank Redemption of animated movies.
[ ] Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (2010)
[ ] Justice League: The New Frontier (2008)
[X] Lord of the Rings (1978) (Ugh….)
[ ] Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1992)
[ ] My Little Pony: The Movie (1986)
[X] Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1982) (At least, I think I liked it. I saw it five times, and was sober for none of them.)
[X] The Prince of Egypt (1998) Very well done, even if the opening musical number (“Deliver Us”) is so good that it overshadows all of the ones that follow.
[ ] Powerpuff Girls: The Movie (2002)
[ ] Quest For Camelot (1999)
[ ] Ringing Bell (1978)
[X] The Road to El Dorado (2000)
[ ] Shinbone Alley (1971)
[ ] Space Jam (1996)
[ ] Starchaser: The Legend of Orin (1985)
[ ] Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (2009)
[ ] Superman/Batman: Apocalypse (2010)
[ ] Superman: Doomsday (2007)
[ ] The Swan Princess (1994)
[ ] Transformers: The Movie (1986)
[ ] Wizards (1977)
[X] Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) One of the best films of the 80s.
[ ] Wonder Woman (2009) Don’t ask me why I haven’t seen this.
[ ] Balto (1995)
[X] Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) Watched it with the Kid. It was just kind of there.
Wow, that was pretty exhaustive. And yet even so, there are omissions, such as last year’s The Book of Kells. Animation marches on!
On an editorial note, I encountered someone on Facebook the other day who literally dislikes all animation. She claimed that none of it was “her cup of tea”, and that she’d rather watch real actors emoting than drawings of people emoting. I found that attitude utterly mystifying. I don’t watch movies for actors; I watch movies for story. If you can tell a wonderful story with a drawing or with an actor, well…who cares about the “how”?
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In the service of Naamah
Quite a while ago, I read a wonderful fantasy novel called Kushiel’s Dart, by Jacqueline Carey, a long book set in a pseudo-Europe roughly around the Renaissance era, featuring as the lead character a woman named Phedre who serves a goddess called Naamah, an an anguissette — a courtesan, or concubine, whose major point of attraction is the fact that she is, well, masochistic by nature. Phedre became deeply involved with the court politics of her city, making enemies before she even knew that she had, and eventually found herself journeying across the continent in an effort to save her kingdom from the disastrous war that was about to befall it. Along the way, she fell in love with her companion and bodyguard, a conflicted young man named Joscelin Verreuil. At the end of the book, most threads were resolved satisfactorily, save one: the escape of the main traitor of the first book, Melisande Shahrizai.
The sequel, Kushiel’s Chosen, opens with Phedre having been made a noblewoman by the new Queen, and with Melisande still at large and very likely scheming anew against the realm. Phedre takes it on herself to try to find Melisande and the insiders who helped her escape. This leads her anew into ever more dangerous areas of court politics, evil plotting, selling herself to people she would rather not, and journeys to areas we didn’t visit in the first book. All the while she is searching for clues to the magic that will release her dearest friend, who voluntarily took on permanent magical imprisonment in the first book.
Kushiel’s Chosen is, as it happens, the middle book of a trilogy, and so it has some of the problems inherent in middle books, leaving certain plotlines unresolved in an ending that sets up the final book. But enough of the plotlines that are inherent to this book are tidied up, so while there is a sense of “To be continued” at the end of Kushiel’s Chosen, it is still an overall satisfying read.
The strength of the book, as in its preceding volume, lies in Carey’s writing and in her ability to populate a familiar world with interesting and sympathetic characters. In Phedre and Joscelin, Carey has created a couple we can’t help but root for – but she does not make things easy for them, in any way at all. They are, in many ways, completely different people, and their relationship is a clear illustration of the old precept that the people we hurt the most tend to be the people we love the most. Carey creates a number of other fascinating new characters here as well: cruel jailers of an inescapable prison, a Prince and Princess who rule a distant island kingdom, a pirate captain, an entire people of supposed heretics who are looking for someone to lead them to the homeland that their god promised them, and many others.
I did find that Kushiel’s Chosen was not quite as engrossing as the first novel; the first half of the present book is mainly character-driven drama that doesn’t move along very briskly at all. The second half is where things start to happen, and the pace livens significantly after that. The first book had some of the same problem, but in that case, Kushiel’s Dart had the sense of exploring a new world that we didn’t know helping to alleviate any problems arising from slow pacing. In Kushiel’s Chosen, we already know the world we’re reading about, so it is a bit more of a problem here. (But it is in no way a large enough problem to detract from reading the book in the first place.)
I am already looking forward to reading the final volume in this trilogy, Kushiel’s Avatar. Carey has also written several other books set in this world; I hope to eventually read those, as well.
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Sentential Links #231
Let’s get to the linkage!
:: I have a huge confession to make. It’s something that I’ve tried to hide, but I can no longer keep silent. I’m sure that when you read it you’ll all leave me en masse and never come back here again. I will have crossed that line with you at last. (I need to…be more exposed to what Steph is confessing about here.)
:: They need to be ready because in January the awards season begins!! A standard rule of thumb: an actress’ skin must be pulled tighter than the red carpet. What they don’t understand is that viewers don’t say, “Wow, she looks amazing!”, they say, “Wow, she looks like Barry Manilow.” Not that the interviewers are any better. One day Joan Rivers and Ryan Seacrest will look as one. (OMG, the photo in Ken’s post can not really be Meg Ryan, can it? Oyyyy….)
:: I wasn’t planning on writing anything on the anniversary of John Lennon’s death. I figured there would be plenty of other voices on the InterWebs this week paying tribute and remembering, and anyway I honestly didn’t think I had much to say about the subject because, as crappy as this is going to sound, John Lennon just doesn’t mean that much to me. (This post doesn’t go in the direction it sounds like it’s about to go. Trust me.)
:: Donn Esmonde wants a museum at Canal Side. That’s a great idea, seeing as museums and nostalgia are the only growth industry we seem to have in this region. (For the life of me, I don’t understand why “set up some zoning regulations for how we want the waterfront to look and then just sell the lots and let entrepreneurs do their thing down there” is never seen as an option. Instead, we endlessly kvetch over what to build on the Buffalo waterfront. Ugh! By the way, lots of people complain about the idea of “big box retail” on Buffalo’s waterfront, apparently being of the notion that a big-box store is incompatible with the type of walkable urban development that we supposedly want around here. Well, check this out:
That is a proposed Wal-Mart for Washington, DC. Looks pretty urban and walkable to me. Zone it and let people build, folks. That’s how you get a vibrant waterfront.)
:: We work hard to shield kids from all things bad. In the process, though, we rob them of opportunities for self protection. (I have no memory of how I found Robyn’s blog, Life by Chocolate. It’s just a terrific blog about life in general.)
:: There are people out there who have no one to relate to, to talk to, to share with – for one, because our society is so reluctant to open up about death and other difficult subjects. And so, I relate, talk, share. And people, like my overall-wearing, pie-throwing reader in New York, relate, talk, and share back. (She’s referring to me, there. Beth Howard is one of my favorite blog discoveries of the last few months. I’ve been reading her for a while, after discovering her during one of my searches for fellow lovers of bib overalls. I found that, in addition to proudly wearing overalls, she lives in Iowa in the very house that’s in the background of the famous painting American Gothic, and that she uses her blog as a way of dealing with some of her issues of grief and sadness after she suffered a staggering loss: her husband, who passed away unexpectedly a little more than a year ago. One week before what would have been Little Quinn’s fifth birthday, actually.
Beth also uses pie as a metaphor for a lot of life’s struggles, and she approaches the baking of pie as therapy and a method of engaging a world that can seem harsh and uninviting at times. She and I have been Facebook friends for a little while, and I recently corresponded with her about issues of grief, and about communication and writing in Blogistan — which some folks find to be of little worth — and about my own love of pie, which includes not just the making and eating of it, but also the wearing of it. Basically it was “Hey, you wear overalls and make pies; I occasionally wear overalls and get hit with pies.”
I refuse to see blogging as worthless, just because it’s online or because online writings seem more ephemeral than stuff that appears on paper. In some ways, I suppose, it is more ephemeral, just from a preservation standpoint, but I’m not sure the distinction is as strong as some seem to think. I’m always struck, when I’m at the library book sale, by all those old paperbacks with jacket copy that reads along the lines of “The latest riveting novel from one of our most beloved storytellers!” or “This novel is sure to be read and treasured for many years to come!” And it’s always some author of whom I have never heard. On the occasions when I Google such an author, their name only shows up on used book seller sites. Their books are nearly completely forgotten.
:: We’ve all heard the stories about people who put up their tree only to have it tip over during the night. I’m ashamed to say it’s even happened to me once in my younger days, but over the years I’ve honed my methods and now can put up a tree the kids could climb — I wouldn’t put it past my boy, either. (Great advice on putting up the Christmas tree! Listen and learn, folks! There’s some great advice there — not the least of which is, Toss the eyebolts and use different screws. Using better-quality hardware than what comes with the item in question is almost always a good idea.)
All for this week, folks!
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Sunday Burst of Weird and AWESOME!
Well, you wouldn’t think that I would have seen so much Weird and/or Awesome what with being offline for most of the last ten days (aside from swiping time here and there at work to check my e-mail and throw up quick blog posts and Facebook status messages), but Boy Howdy, has that turned out to not be the case. I’ve seen plenty! Hooray for the Interweb! Oddities and Awesome, as always, abound!
:: The folks behind Archie comics are experimenting with “Real World Archie“, or something like that.
But as the Archie brand expands, a new monthly magazine series sold in major bookstore chains and Wal-Mart, Life With Archie: The Married Life, has been quietly ripping apart the fabric of life in Riverdale. The recession looms large and disease and infidelity intrude on longtime friendships and young marriages. Life With Archie is a spin-off published by Archie Comics, so it’s not a rogue parody. But within just a few months, Riverdale has turned from a 20th-century middle-American paradise into a 21st-century middle-class hell. Is all this grit really necessary in a universe that has blissfully hummed along for decades without it?
Ooooh! How about a CSI: Riverdale? Maybe one murder can revolve around the wounds matching the spikes from that hat that Jughead always wears. I, for one, hope this trend continues! Let’s see versions of Richie Rich wherein our hero and his impossibly wealthy family are done in by the Great Recession, or by an insider-trading scandal, or stuff like that! Let’s see the real class struggle between Richie and girlfriend Gloria! Let’s not ask how it is that I was able to call up the name of Richie Rich’s girlfriend without having to Google it!
:: I imagine most of you will have seen this already, but it’s too amazing not to share. Since the Minnesota Vikings were to have a home game today, the FOX Sports people had their cameras all set up a few days in advance for the game-day broadcast. So they had the cameras running when, after a major snowstorm pummeled the Upper Midwest, the weight of the snowpack on the Metrodome’s roof finally became too much for the air-supported structure to bear.
That is some amazing stuff!
(And this is the fifth time the roof has collapsed!)
:: A science writer blogs about the Apollo 11 moon mission for NPR, and gets a response…from Neil Armstrong. That is some serious Awesome, I have to tell you. It would be like if George Lucas were to e-mail me in response to, well, anything I write about Star Wars!
More next week!
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Sunday Stealing
This week it’s called The Ninja Meme, part 1.
1. What do you add to your coffee?
Raw sugar. Occasionally, if I’m in the mood, I’ll add milk or half-n-half. Very rarely I’ll use a flavored creamer, but 95 percent of the time, I just add sugar. I subscribe to the old Turkish proverb: “Coffee should be strong as hell, black as death, and sweet as love.”
2. What are you reading now?
Cordelia’s Honor, by Lois McMaster Bujold, in an attempt to get into the Miles Vorkosigan series. I read this before some years ago and found it nice and entertaining but not particularly compelling. This time, however, I’m finding myself a lot more involved in the story. I’ll report more when I finish it.
I’m between nonfiction books at the moment.
3. Do you own a gun?
No, nor do I have any intention to. I have no problem with gun ownership and I have little taste for eroding the 2nd amendment, but on a personal level, guns give me the serious willies.
4. Are you registered to vote?
Yes. I’m a registered Democrat. This year, in fact, marked the tenth anniversary of the last time I cast a ballot for a Republican (former Congressman Amory Houghton). The only election I’ve skipped was 2002, when we had moved to Syracuse just a month prior to voting. I had no idea who the local candidates were or what the local issues amounted to in that time frame, so I abstained.
5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments?
Sometimes, but not terribly so. My current doctor is super nice.
6. What do you think of hot dogs?
Love ’em. In fact, I rank hot dogs high among my favorite foods. (They have to be grilled, or at least pan-seared so they have some texture. Steamed or boiled dogs do nothing for me. I do make exception to this rule for sidewalk hot dog stands, though.)
7. Favorite Christmas Song?
“Little Drummer Boy”. My favorite version? Bing Crosby and David Bowie.
Honorable mentions to “Angels We Have Heard On High”, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”, and “Silent Night”. For more modern Christmas songs, I’m partial to “Happy Christmas (War is Over)”, “Same Old Lang Syne”, and “River”.
8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
OJ and water. I tend to have coffee a bit later on in the morning; I don’t get right up to coffee.
9. Can you do push ups?
A few, but not enough. (Note to self: start going to the gym again.)
10. What was the name of your first boyfriend/girlfriend?
Errr…well, it depends. First date? Tammy. First girl with whom I had a “thing”? Chris.
11. What’s your favorite piece of jewelery?
My wedding ring. Close second: the star sapphire The Girlfriend (later The Wife) got me the Christmas before our wedding.
12. Favorite hobby?
Reading, writing, blogging, walking, listening to music, ogling power tools, using power tools, waxing poetic about bib overalls.
13. Do you work with people who idolize you?
I have no idea if any of them “idolize” me. If they do, I hope they stop; I’m more than aware of my massive imperfections! I like the fact that I’m generally liked, though.
14. Do you have ADD?
Not to my knowledge.
15. What’s one trait that you hate about yourself?
My tendency to fly off the handle, sometimes.
16. What’s your Middle name?
None: I just have an initial, ‘C’. I should get the story someday as to why that’s the case.
17. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment.
“Hey, why don’t I have a middle name, anyway?”
“Wow, is my butt comfy!” (I just bought a new cushion for my desk chair and I’m trying it out now. Huzzah!)
“Goodness, there’s a lot of chicken in our fridge.” (We have leftover KFC and a leftover rotisserie bird in there right now.)
18. Name 3 things you bought yesterday.
Yesterday? Geez…coffee, a bagel, and a half a sub sandwich for lunch.
19. Name 3 beverages you regularly drink.
Water, orange juice, coffee.
20. Current worry right now?
Wow, I wish the Christmas season had an extra week or two in it. There’s a lot I wish I had time to do!
21. What side do you dress to?
I don’t know what this means. Thinking about it, I suppose I put my left leg in pants first…I guess…hmmmm. With overalls, I always fasten the right shoulder strap to the bib first. (By the way, that 90s trend of wearing one strap unfastened was pretty goofy.)
22. Favorite place to be?
Wherever The Wife is. (Awwwww!)
23. How did you bring in the New Year?
24. Where would you like to go?
The Smithsonian.
25. Name three people who will see today.
I think there’s something mis-worded here! Three people who will see today? Or three people whom I will see today? The latter seems funnier, so: three people who will see today are actor Howard Hesseman, British singer Seal, and the guy who plays Eric Delko on CSI: Miami.
Hooray!
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My year in statuses
What has two thumbs and an Internet connection?
Answer: This guy!
Yes, our Internet connection appears to finally be fixed. What apparently happened is that a woman who lives in our building switched apartments, moving literally across the hall. But when they deactivated the phone connection to her old apartment, they deactivated ours instead, by mistake. Oops.
But now we’re back online. Huzzah!!!
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It’s easy if you try
I was nine years old when John Lennon died; I had no idea, really, who he was when I first heard the name. I remember hearing the news on the radio as I was driven to school the next morning. I knew nothing then about him or The Beatles. And ultimately, since I didn’t start loving his music (and the rest of ’em) until just a couple of years ago, he’d really been dead 28 years before he came to mean something to me.
So, in a way, John Lennon is, to me, not unlike Berlioz or Wagner or Mozart: a dead artist whose work came to mean something to me when he was already gone. That’s not intended to be any kind of deep statement, just a thought….
Imagine.
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An antidote to annoyance
As you all might expect, I am seriously irritated by my lack of Internet connection at home and the Keystone Kops manner in which EarthLink is going about fixing it. The latest? Out of curiosity I decided today just to see if maybe my phone was causing some kind of problem, so I experimented with plugging it in, unplugging it, et cetera, just to see if my DSL would come on. And what did I find out?
Since their “tech” came out, my landline has apparently been dead too! What the hell did they do, shut off my entire phone line instead of fixing it?
AGGHHHH!!!
So I’m annoyed and need something to amuse me. Which brings me to…some pie-throwing action.
Antigone Magazine is trying to raise money by selling calendars; in an effort to drum up business, the editor, a young woman named Amanda Reaume, has decided to take a pie in her face for every ten calendars they sell. They must be up to thirty, because so far, she’s received three:
Self-inflicted, too — that takes some moxie.
And then there are Ten Unexpected Pies in the Face:
And…ten more (with a Star Wars one)!
OK, that’s helping my mood. A bit, anyway. Harumph.
Stupid EarthLink.