sticks and carrots

[freckles_and_doubt]

A new Cunning Plan to combat work-avoidance has vouchsafed itself to me. Bizarrely enough, it entails making use of the local video store's R50-and-five-videos-for-a-week special, mostly in the arena of bad sf movies. I trundled homeward today with a whole fistful of B-grade horrors, including X-Files, Star Trek: First Contact, which I've never seen, The Faculty, which is horrible and cheesy and which I adore for actually quite similar reasons to my adoration of BvS, and Dracula 2000. This constitutes actual work conditioning in that I can only really watch them in the evenings, as our TV is old and dying enough that it's barely distinguishable in daylight. I thus have to finish all my outstanding work before sundown, when the vampires come out. This works! I marked like a fiend all afternoon, finished the batch, updated the course web page, cleared my e-mail, sent off the newsletter and tidied out my study, this last being imperative as the library keeps sending me polite reminders about the nasty critical tomes which are buried somewhere in the literary strata of my workspace, or rather L-space.

Anyway. Dracula 2000 is what I watched this evening, leaving me all jumpy at sudden noises because, man, I still cannot take the build-up of tension in horror films. It was on the list because a student wants to write an essay on it. Not only was the film not as bad as I expected (actual plot coherence! actual cool use of vampire mythology! actual eroticism! and actually well filmed, bizarrely given that Wes Craven produces rather than directing), but the additional bonus unexpectedly surfaced of a whole minute or so of Nathan Fillion screen-time. Playing a priest. Again. What's with that man and priests? I kept on getting Caleb flashbacks, although this was a good-guy Catholic priest rather than an insane preacher. And if he's not playing priests, it's embittered atheists. Definite religion issues here. Or maybe it's just the shape of his face. Not that I am, for an instant, taking issue with the shape of his face. Sigh.

The Evil Landlord has been living in a giddy whirl of transport angst, starting on Thursday night with his car being nicked from outside the house. Car-less weekend, with me playing chauffeuse, which is sure as hell karmically overdue given the amount of ferrying around the countryside he's done on my behalf during My Carless Years (2002-2004). Then the police found a car which was possibly it, on Sunday afternoon. After crawling through an epic snarl of paperwork, he has established that it is, in fact, his car, more or less intact apart from the buggered lock and ignition. All is gas and gaiters in the New South Africa.

Today's Interesting Lecturing Factoid: out of a class of 20 third-years, ONE had heard of blogging (she keeps one), NONE have ever been in a chat-room, and TWELVE know all about fantasy role-playing games (can you tell we're onto internet culture, net.sex and MMORPGS?). What's with the youth of today? It's the bloody mainstreaming of geek culture, that's what it is. *seethes quietly*. I remember the days when one whispered about Dungeons and Dragons.

p.s. Those of you who are, like me, unashamedly mad Buffy-philes, may be interested in the current special on at dvd.co.uk. Buffy and Angel, all seasons, at £18 per season, free UK delivery. I can feel another credit card assault coming on...

Comments

The Faculty.

[pinkthulhu.livejournal.com]

The Faculty is admittedly very cheesy, but also loads of fun. It's got paranoia, humour, teen angst and Josh Hartnett in a great himbo role. I love the way the teachers abandon their coffee machines and start drinking water continuously. I think it's a statement on our modern health obsessions, and how it can only end in tentacles. :)

Re: The Faculty.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Glad I'm not the only shamefaced fan ;>. I love the way it uses horror motifs to externalise said teen angst - just like BVS. Nicely self-aware and very, very cynical about conformity and American high-school life. And it has not only Josh Hartnett, but Elijah Wood...

punting a flat-bottomed raft on the mainstream

[(Anonymous)]

twelve seems incredibly high - w00 - did you tell them about CLAWs?

but ONE blogger and NO chatters... are they amish?

d@vid

Re: punting a flat-bottomed raft on the mainstream

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

You hopeless programmer, you. They're not Amish, they're third-year humanities students, which basically means that they use computers to (a) write essays, (b) send e-mail, and (c) in some cases, play games. They use the Internet to (a) find essays to plagiarise, and (b)... not sure there is a (b), actually. It's very depressing. I suppose (b) access the course information, reluctantly, under protest. And I think I'm the dinosaur here!

I didn't need to tell them about CLAWs. They clearly have their important role-playing lives totally under control. *is miffed*.

[(Anonymous)]

I watched The Faculty in German. Don't think I lost much on the plot, but I suspect most of the fun was to be had in the dialogue, so that was a fairly pointless experience then.

Am distressed at revelations of Buffy cheapness. I'm sure I'm not allowed to go there. Especially since I am a completist, and will be unhappy with anything less than ALL of them. I really shouldn't. *peeks through fingers* well, maybe just a quick look then...

I have also never, to my recollection, been in a chatroom.

robynn

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Actually, your completist bent may yet save you. The last Buffy season, 7, is apparently not actually out in the cheaper format. Annoying.

[(Anonymous)]

I, too, have never been in a chatroom. This blog, though, almost qualifies.

wolverine_nun