come back my brain

[freckles_and_doubt]

The mere fact of a three-day weekend seems to have switched my brain off. This is not entirely a bad thing, putting me in exactly the right space for watching Reign of Fire (dreadful, entertaining, topless!sweaty!Christian Bale, cool dragons) and Nightwatch (weird, interesting, good-for-a-given-value-of, strange special effects) last night, while eating pizza. And Sid is all rampagous again, leaving me snuffly and with less room in the inside of my skull for actual thinking, which Does Not Bode Well for the review I have to finish writing this afternoon.

So, random linkery.

• This idiot was clearly bitten by a knitting needle in early youth and has never recovered. As rants go, this lacks any vestige of quality, intelligence or logic. I immediately thought the same thing that strawberryfrog did: hello, handcrafts actually do constitute an act of resistance in an age of mass-production.


• Henry Jenkins hypothesises, and proceeds to entertainingly demonstrate, that Obama is actually Spock.


• Kage Baker does actually intelligent things with time travel. Also, Renaissance herbery! In the Garden of Iden is available off the Tor sign-up list, which is a truly worthy thing for which to hand over one's email address. (This service announcement for the benefit of librsa, who needs to sign up).

Comments

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

I kind-of-liked Nightwatch. Somehow I heard that it's based on a popular Russian book (in a trilogy), and watching it without reading the booksis supposedly akin to watching a Harry Potter movie without first reading the book - it works, just, sort of, but feels too episodic.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I've read the books, which I really enjoyed and have actually reviewed before (http://extemporanea.livejournal.com/131066.html). Given that the film was based on the first third of the first book, it's actually surprisingly faithful in plot (mostly) and very much in atmosphere. The slight off-the-wallness and mad pop culture touches (Buffy, computer games) are peculiar to the film, the book is more deadpan and understated, but the world-view is well-represented and the truly weird special effects pick up the vertiginous feel of the book very nicely.

[mac1235.livejournal.com]

I plan to show the first two movies, when the third one comes out.

[confluence.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

My Mom brought me the last book from Poland and I just read it today. It's pretty good.

Unfortunately, the second movie is a lot worse than the first one -- it starts off as a reasonable adaptation of the last part of the first book (IIRC), and then it takes a left turn, accelerates and plunges off the deep end. I have no idea what they're going to do for the third movie; it looks like they've quite thoroughly painted themselves into a corner.

[mac1235.livejournal.com]

Are there good special effects?

[bronchitikat.livejournal.com]

I suspect that idiot has a typical male non-knitter view of knitting - see the Yarn Harlot for more about how non-knitters just don't get it at all (which is entirely their loss).

You & strawberryfrog are right - handicrafts are acts of rebellion in an age of mass-production. So why is he so dreadfully anti anyone actually being creative & making a statement by producing something, rather than the more usual teenage rebellion thing of destroying stuff - about which he reckons someone might make films.

Silly journalist! But maybe that's part of the problem - he was miffed cos he got to cover knitting - which he clearly regards as wimpish, rather than something apparently more macho, & destructive!

[(Anonymous)]

That Idiot wrote something similar, but equally devoid of sense, a while ago (in some insignificant Philadelphia newspaper, which is also where this first appeared) and of course got a big response from knitters trying to point out to him that he really, seriously, big-time missed the point. He replied to all these responses very politely and respectfully... and then totally skewered them in print. ("LOL knitters fight back aw it's so pathetic!!1!") Of course a number of the responses were published on Ravelry so I can tell you they certainly were not "hysterical and barely literate", or at least not all, probably not most.

It would seem that he's pining for attention and has come back to poke some more. Tiresome. I'm just disappointed the Grauniad has bothered to pick this one up, thus feeding the troll with a whole new (and much bigger) juicy audience.

scroob

Troll

[first-fallen.livejournal.com]

Yes, I doubted he was actually serious when I read the article. It looks like he's just writing something he knows will rub a lot of people the wrong way for no reason other than to get comments and attention. Sigh, obviously wasn't hugged enough as a child.

What worries me more is that XX linked to it (in a sort of praiseworthy way), paragon of tolerance and rational thinking that he is. Hmm, I didn't figure him for a troll.

Re: Troll

[(Anonymous)]

I think the explanation there would be "irony". And possibly "trying to make scroobious explode".

Re: Troll

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

XX is perfectly capable of egregious trolldom. He makes it worse by being a paragon of tolerance and rational thinking at other times :)

Tor books

[first-fallen.livejournal.com]

I must come around with a flash drive sometime. I am on the list, but I didn't know the books only stay up for 2 weeks :(.