so much for the weekend

[freckles_and_doubt]

Yes, well. I think the 'flu hit me harder than I thought; I seem to have done nothing for the last week other than watch bad movies, read Dick Francis novels and Lemony Snicket, and sleep an average of ten hours a night. This has, bizarrely, effectively shifted my sleep cycle, so that, instead of being a bed-by-10pm sorta girl, I'm now routinely hitting the sack at around 1am and waking at 11 or so. This makes it kinda hard to get any work done. I honestly don't know how all you night owls do it. Sleep hours during the day take up twice as much time as sleep at night. Weird biological mathematics.

At any rate, happy to report that The Core, while causing starmadeshadow to gibber gently with astrophysical horror at various points, wasn't as bad a film as I'd expected; actually some quite cool and repeatable dialogue. (Something you never hear in thriller films and definitely should: FBI goons: "Please come with us, sir." Cute professor: "What's happening?" Goon: "We don't know, sir, your security clearance is higher than ours."). Also, the cute professor had all us postgrad academics swooning with pleasure, not because he was cute (although he was), but because he was a PhD supervisor who was not only in the same room as his students for minutes at a time, but made constructive suggestions such as "I'll sign your PhDs with my eyes shut." Plus, he saved the world. I'm so in the wrong field.

On the actual achievement front, my Falkenstein party finally hit Earth again on Friday night, after no more harrowing experiences than the breakdown of their spacecraft's Babbage Engine in mid-flight, necessitating frantic vandalism of delicate mechanisms in order to manually raise and lower anti-gravity shutters. Entertaining, for the DM at least. Splashdown in North Sea, and they didn't even get arrested. Score.

Am now sending self sternly off to bed, on the grounds that I have to reclaim the daylight somehow, I don't write academic stuff at all well at night, for some reason, my intellectual function shuts down at about 7pm. Must... finish... Tolkien ... paper!

Comments

Gibbering Gently

[starmadeshadow.livejournal.com]

Earth's core stalled: maybe
Earth's core stalled without releasing any of energy stored in it, and consequently blowing the planet to pieces: possibly
Unexpectedly evil microwaves that were mysteriously kept at bay by the now non-existant magnetic field around the earth: ok; I've always had my doubts about electromagnetic thoery.
Using the Enormous Digging Device's Unobtanium casing to hot wire the AC circuits that power said EDD: ok, I'll buy that
Pilot managing to find a gap between two tectonic plates so that the survivors can get back up: no problem
A PhD supervisor in the same room as his students for more than 5 minutes: Noooooooooooooooooooooo. Twitch. Bloody Holywood. Can't they get ANYTHING right ? Have they no sense of what's just completely unbelievable ?

Re: Gibbering Gently

[starmadeshadow.livejournal.com]

Theory. That's what I meant.

Re: Gibbering Gently

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I should probably hasten to add, at this point, that the view of supervision offered by my fellow academics f(starmadeshadow and the Friendly Psychologist) is not, in fact my own experience, since my PhD supervisor was amazing, supportive and a locus of sweetness, light and inspiration. It only seems to be sciences which have these problems. Perhaps I'm not in the wrong field.

I feel we're all missing the salient point here

[(Anonymous)]

DICK FRANCIS NOVELS?

I'm sorry, I actually had to Google it just to check that it was what I thought it was.

Trashy disaster movies, fine. I'm right there with you - we *like* seeing Manhattan crushed beneath a giant wave/lizard/ufo/whatever. But Dick Francis? *shudder*

robynn

Re: I feel we're all missing the salient point here

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Oy! Ms-Watches-Junky-Television-Shows-Obsessively, I'd be careful who I pointed fingers at... ;>

Dick Francis writes actually pretty good thrillers, mostly about racehorses. They're nothing literary, but his command of the English language is quite a lot more than competent, and, even if most of his heroes are approximately the same person, it's a fairly likeable person (and if Murakami can do it, so can he!). Truth is, while I've never been a horsey person in any way, my dad's entire family are, and I find the distant contemplation of the equine breed to be curiously soothing. And something mindless and thrillerish is absolutely the only response to (a) a nine-week second quarter, and (b) 'flu.

Re: I feel we're all missing the salient point here

[(Anonymous)]

Oooh, I can top that any day, I've been reading Nora Roberts shamelessly for years!
KathyM, not-ashamed-to-sign-my-name-to-it :)

Re: I feel we're all missing the salient point here

[(Anonymous)]

Ouch. That really hurt.

Absolutely true, of course. Although my obsession does tend to come and go. I haven't watched any TV at all in about two weeks.

But soon... soon... there will be Sky+! And then the trashy TV will be NEVER ENDING!

Still no Days of our Lives, though. Poo.

One for the club

[(Anonymous)]

On an entirely unrelated note, here (http://www.empireonline.co.uk/site/news/NewsStory.asp?news_id=16890) is one for the IHTCC*. Ignoring the worshipful tone of the article, it's the squirty content that matters.

Also, is katie holmes actually a full head taller than him? :)


*I Hate Tom Cruise*** Club**

**I had one too, but I'm merging it with yours, since I'm the only member and hence can't whinge as effectively.

***What is it about him? He's just so smug.

jo (the far flung one)

Re: One for the club

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Actually, lots of us seem to be crawling out of the woodwork, baying for blood. Yes, quite definitely smug. It's that eternal, self-consciously "adorable", maddening half-smile. I hated it even before he started on the whole godawful Scientology trip. I'm deriving quiet, vindictive satisfaction from all the websites who are flat-out stating that the Katie Holmes "romance" is a set-up designed to promote movies and mask TC's inherent gayness.

Re: One for the club

[(Anonymous)]

exactly! If only they had cast someone like Viggo in 'Last Samurai', it wouldn't have been ruint for me. He knew he was Tom Cruise the _whole time_, and projected it so thoroughly that I couldn't lose myself in old Japan. What a rubbish actor! _and_ the scientology thing. Sign me up for the club!
KathyM

Re: One for the club

[(Anonymous)]

That inherent gayness is desperately obvious, isn't it. Dating Katie (and behaving so weirdly over it) would be bad enough, but to say things like: "I love women! They smell good! They look pretty!" immediately removes any lingering doubts any of us ever had.

Re: One for the club

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

LOL! Yup, pretty much. The man is such an idiot. If it's true, and he is gay, to warp your life like that in the pursuit of fame is a deeply awful thing. No wonder the "smile" looks strained. Idiot. And if he isn't gay, then he has even less excuse, n'est-ce pas??

It seems to be open season on irritating Hollywood stars, currently. Apart from the awful TC being squirted, some mad woman at a party apparently cut open Leonardo di Caprio's face/neck with a broken bottle, narrowly avoiding a major artery, and necessitating stitches. While I frequently long to slap Leonardo, I doubt I'd go so far as to say it with broken bottles.