head #17

So, I waitedwaitedwaited patientlypatientlypatiently for Apple to squeeeeeze out that new Mac Mini, and then it finally appeared! Last month! Hooray! I ordered it like this: CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! FAINT! And then it came, and it was the worst computer I have ever seen in my life. It appeared to have been assembled by a committee of those weird, embittered Mac-haters who used to troll Daring Fireball back when it allowed comments. It has no optical drive! The specs are weird! The only included monitor cable is three inches long and 100% useless unless applied to Apple’s new $999 screen! It has four USB ports! It is pointlessly tiny! Why is it so fucking tiny! It’s not like I’m going to be carrying it around! It’s supposed to be a desktop computer, isn’t it! You know, if it were slightly less tiny, you could’ve maybe fit a fucking superdrive in there, couldn’t you! Speaking of which, it has no software component! It relies upon the Magic of the Internet to back stuff up/repair problems, in the event of an inevitable (if you’re me) catastrophe! So let’s imagine a scenario in which I attempt the upload of my 450GB of pure binary shit onto some fantastic ephemeral Apple Data Cloud in the middle of the night as my computer gently weeps, and think of the many exciting new dirty words I will accidentally invent! And what happens when the system wakes up cranky one happy Sunday morning when I am supposed to be vetting thesis topics and it can’t find its start-up disk! Those nakedly grasping brilliant Apple engineers! What a bunch of fucking cards! They should just start selling branded computer cases and let us put the parts in ourselves!

Also, ALSO, I bought the ($77! At Amazon!) Apple-approved optical drive that was supposed to complete the Mini, Cameron Crowe-style, but it had such a short cord I couldn’t even plug it in. Well, I mean, I could plug it in, but it looked like this, and obviously I couldn’t exactly sit the fucker on top of the computer itself. (The wifi antenna-thing is still in the top of the case, right?) Also it ate up one of my four (4) (IV) available USB ports, leaving me with three (3) (III) open USB interfaces and approximately nineteen USB devices, including hubs. Really amazing cool idea, you guys.

( MORE COMPUTER DRAMA: CUT FOR LENGTH )

Also, speaking of which, I have been trying to Write Something for the last nine days, and Things Are Not Exactly Going As Smoothly As Expected. So, rather than wangsting tenaciously over that (MY BRAIN CANNOT CONTINUE COCKBLOCKING ME FOREVER, CORRECT? I MEAN, EVENTUALLY AFTER MANY YEARS I WILL HAVE TO DIE OR SOMETHING?) I thought I would do that thing I do where I write strange long whiny ‘reviews’ of movies everybody else saw eighteen months ago. And that’s what I did: Ta-da!

( I WATCHED PRETTY MUCH ANY NON-ROMCOM MOVIE I COULD FIND ON MY TEEVEE LAST MONTH, BUT MY FAVORITE WAS, SPOILERS, INCEPTION, MOSTLY BECAUSE OF THE STARTLING VERISIMILITUDE THAT POWERS ITS NARRATIVE (LET’S ACT LIKE POST-HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION IS SOME KIND OF TERRIFYING LOGISTICALLY-IMPOSSIBLE SCI-FI MANEUVER THAT NOBODY HAS EVER HEARD OF BEFORE, IT’LL BE FUN), AND NOT BECAUSE IT FEATURED A SUGARY ASSORTMENT OF PIPING-HOT SLICES OF MANPIE. THAT IS A TRUE STORY. AND ALSO NOT BECAUSE I THOUGHT LEONARDO DICAPRIO’S PERSISTENTLY IRRITATING CHARACTER WAS NAMED ‘DUMB COB,’ FOR A WHILE. THAT’S A TRUE STORY TOO. NOTE: CONTAINS NSFL MANGU PORN. )

That was really long! Probably I should post more often, so there’s less chance of these huge tumescent word-monsters escaping unchecked into the unwary wilderness.

Lastly: CONGRATULATIONS YOUR THIRTEE WON TOO!

Now I am going to go address my e-mail situation. (“HELLOOOOOO, E-MAIL SITUATION!”)

† cf.

ETA: UGH THIS FUCKING POST. DID DREAMWIDTH'S HTML EDITOR SPONTANEOUSLY GROW SOME STANDARDS IN JULY OR SOMETHING?

I had a very nice Christmas — I got a new baby Kindle, a Threadless teeshirt which is not overtly humiliating, and a giant amazing Hokusai book that I have been humping nonstop since I unwrapped it. So, during Christmas, I had the fun — but after Christmas I was forced, by the Politeness Monster (and also the Obligation Monster), to visit some of my adoptive father’s relatives, who somehow always manage to make me feel as though I am the Venus Hottentot and they are all positively astonished I can use my silverware so adeptly. This is no mean feat, considering the intensity of my personal dorkiness. (They are, on average, essentially the figures depicted in American Gothic; when my father’s father was alive, my father’s sister asked my mother to keep me away from him because my blackness made him "uncomfortable.") (Really!) (I didn’t find that out until a couple of years ago, because naturally Mom was too awesome to let something so stupid affect me at the age of eight.) (She did keep me away from the weird old idiot for clearly related reasons, however.)

I'm not getting you down at all, am I? Don't take it personal. I was the designated excuse-generator on this particular excursion; I agreed to accompany my father (who hates his family, of course) specifically in order to feign illness and get everybody out several hours early. I am the very soul of self-sacrifice! Don't I know it.

I watched some things!

Should I cut? It's pretty long; I’ll cut.

( But everything you learn there will help when you return there. )

Hey, I am retarded and I like children's movies! I think that goes without saying, though. Adult movies are insultingly loud and misogynistic, or insufficiently full of Alan Rickman as Hwæt the pansermøøse, or boring pointless depressing love stories about long-dead dumb white people who wrote lovely poetry and made pretty hats but failed to notice that they were all going to die sooner or later anyway, so please stop crying already. I mean, come on, lady — what are you, a talking animal? Now, they have real problems.

So, Glee was actually really good tonight, probably just because I said it sucked — although I think it should probably change its name to We Love You, Kurt, Because You Are So Very Adorable and Also Good at Acting. So, it is exactly like Buffy: The Crap Years: every fourth episode is great enough that you forget how bad the other three were, I adore exactly one character and I want to split-kick everybody else in the face, and imaginary gayness is still far more entertaining than imaginary straightness. Dude, I’d better go refill my Accutane prescription! Don’t wanna run out of that stuff :[

Here’s the always-awesome BTB on Glee’s use of the word "tranny." Glee is possibly the only show on television that enrages both fundamentalist Christians and vagina-necklace feminists in equal and constant measure, which is actually kind of comical, sadly enough; I don’t find it transgressive (usually), because it is almost impossible for me to be "offended" by anything that could be even generically classified as art. Also, I am pretty chill with the idea that all Americans — black Americans, gay Americans, Asian-Americans, whatever other kinds of Americans may be hiding out there who have yet to receive their convenient, easy-to-apply identity-politics labels in the mail — labor under stereotypes which can be fruitfully engaged and mocked in public, without hurting anybody. So if, say, Asian-Americans find themselves battling the deeply insulting notion that they all look alike and are indistinguishable from one another (which is just weird, anyway), and then someone on a popular teevee show (Glee, remember) refers to an Asian-American character as the "Other Asian," that doesn’t twist my knickers into an anchor knot at all. Not because I am a hipster racist! (I promise!) But because, you know, at least somebody finally noticed. I can understand why other people might be sort of put-off by it, though. This is America! A lot of brave men died in the cold at Valley Forge so that you could be offended by anything you like. But, I cannot understand why these already-angry people continue to get so het up about every possible 'controversial’ topic that ever appears on Glee, nor do I understand why they keep watching it if it’s so terribly, terribly abusive to their fragile psyches. Turn Glee off and find something else to do with your time, kids! It’s fun and easy. I turn the teevee off five or six times a day. Just, please don’t get all boycott-happy on me and start accusing me of being a bad feminist because I won’t stop watching Glee myself. That’s some Rush Limbaugh shit right there, is what that is. It’s only a teevee show! Just like Sarah Palin.

Anyway, my renaissance of Glee love is not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about this:



Or, I will want to talk about it (I’m sure) after I’ve read it. I am a little worried about it, quite frankly; Dream looks very muscular and competent and butch in this comic, as though he's the one who goes around opening all of the other Endless's pickle jars. Also, he is sporting a relatively restrained hairstyle, and he is wearing a very restrained (and incredibly un-Japanese) outfit. With a color on it! That is a little unfortunate for him, I think. Dream is engaged in a hot, highly-constested race for Biggest Hater of Colors on My Clothes with his bff/soulmate Angelina Jolie, and I would hate to see him lose just because of this one story. You know how Angelina gloats.

But, what I really wanted to talk about was this thing I found on Demonoid while I was futilely Googling Sandman comics as I waited for my copy of Dream Hunters to be shipped to me. It is called The Song of Orpheus, and boy, does it ever suck.

( Let me explain why, because I can tell by that look in your eyes that you care. )

Yes, yes, of course I will find this thing in the comics store and buy it. I am not like that. You know what I am like! I learned Japanese so that I could stop subjecting my precious, precious eyeballs to the illegitimate whore-bath that is scanlations. I will totally give Neil Gaiman his richly-deserved Orpheus money, because Gaiman is still kind of hot, and who wants to make hot people sad? I am a total masochist who likes it when Daddy hits me.

I am always having really bright ideas for blog posts while I’m sitting around in the backs of cabs staring out the window or painstakingly explaining to one of my students, yet again, what a preposition is and why we do not end sentences with them when we are writing research papers (MIDTERMS!!), and then I log into DreamWidth and my brain goes: RIBBIT.

Currently I am entertaining the dramz, which I will describe in loving detail once I’ve dealt with them, but I did learn a valuable lesson: Do not ever attempt to edit a freshly-made translation while you are having a panic attack. It does not end well for anybody (especially the commas).

Also I am translating five or eight different comics for The Heart Goes Nine, which I am hoping to have online sometime in the Christmas/New Year’s tunnel. I know I said exactly the same thing last Christmas, but luckily for me I am a prize-winning procrastinator: Last Christmas, I did not have any idea what the fuck I was doing. My concept of "の" as a nominalizer did not exist, for example. I did not know that から, when it shows up after a て-form verb, means "after," etc. (If you don’t give a shit about Japanese, you should know that these things are, like, super-elementary stuff a tiny Japanese child would be embarrassed to hear from a kindergarten teacher.)

But, I am much better now! Now, I am only surprised by things like the fact that "ってゆうか," which is one of Japan’s many exciting quotacular postpositions, can be shortened to "つーか," especially if you have animal ears.

I still want to babble about Sherlock, which I am going to watch for possibly the fifth time this weekend on PBS, and I also have a colossal post about the newer wave of "licensed" manga — but right now: RIGHT NOW YOU GET LINKS!

» This guy is going to be Dirk Gently! Which is a little odd, given that Dirk Gently is supposed to be a short, rotund, ethnically Scandinavian man, and also Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is utterly unfilmable, but don’t let that distract you from the fact that somebody is making a Dirk Gently movie!

» I was poking around Edroso’s archives last night because I was bored/flipping out, and I found this thing and loled for ten minutes.

» Benedict Cumberbatch said some words and then somebody wrote them down. This doesn’t happen enough.

» Google keeps taking The Song of Lunch off YouTube because, like the new Final Fantasy trailer, it is highly sought after by copyright-disregarding, record industry-bankrupting, adolescent digital pirates? Really? That’s an interesting idea, Google. I think you may have missed a memo somewhere. Anyway, here’s the trailer. NOTE: I downloaded The Song of Lunch off TPB, and it was horrible. Really horrible. Boring. Stupid. It wasn’t even a real poem, anyway; it didn’t rhyme and there were no shipwrecks or anything. Everyone is all, nobody has filmed a poem on teevee for like a million years! And I’m like, dude, there’s a reason for that. (And you know I would watch Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman stir spaghetti sauce for an hour with stars in my eyes, so it can’t be my fault.)

» We are T-minus 33 days until the deployment of something Susanna Clarke wrote into our mailboxes. Yes, it is an essay about Jane Austen novels, but desperation has lowered our standards considerably.

I also have a new, readable layout, which I got from here and did not edit like at all.

Next week, then?

I was planning to post an elaborate review of three angel-related, smutty romance novels that I just read (I am a $2 whore for dirty angels) — but I can’t find one of them at the moment. I’m sure it’s around here somewhere? It was the worst one, though, so maybe I threw it out the window at some point and I just don’t remember.

As a consolation prize, I offer you: A few tiny movie reviews!
(All these movies are out on DVD; I seldom go to the theater anymore, because it gives me splitting, week-long headaches. After Avatar, I was literally in bed in the dark for a whole day, and not a very smiley person for most of the following week. Currently I’m trying to collect all my extra pain cards so I can punch them for the new Alice in Wonderland movie sometime this week.)

9 — I really liked this, although it was nowhere near as "adult" as it seemed. Pixar movies in general are heavier, more upsetting, and more emotionally mature — if also less scary-looking. Speaking of which, 9 did in fact look and sound gorgeous, and it was just as scary-looking as it should’ve been considering its provenance and style. If there had been 25% less action and 65% more character development, I would’ve loved it, but as it played I can only muster up some like. Also, had I seen this movie as a child, I would’ve had nightmares about it every night for one million consecutive years. Recommended :]

District 9 — I found this one both dull and yucky. It’s very easy for a movie to make me hide my eyes because something on screen is gross-looking, and much harder to make me avert them because something on screen has reminded me of the many ordinary ways in which I am a giant asshole. District 9 was trying for the second, and only managed the first. And I genuinely hope that I never see another over-earnest fake documentary as long as I live; I now associate the format with The Office, which puts preachy crap like District 9 at a distinct disadvantage. I also felt that I’ve been reading a version of the movie’s plot once a year, every year since I was eleven, in every new edition of The Year’s Best Science Fiction. And the "lesson" with which the movie wished to bludgeon me to death was unspeakably lame, and better learned from other, more subtle teachers; I learned it, for example, when I was about 12, from Kevin Anderson’s story Human, Martian — One, Two, Three. Not recommended.

Inglourious Basterds — My mother is a huge fan of Tarantino movies, so she forced me to watch this one with her while I was visiting last month. It was really good! In a bad way. Before I saw this movie, I had never actually considered the fact that the past — a series of events which actually happened to real, human people — is a place, like fairyland, about which we enjoy making up stories. For fun. Weird? Also note-worthy for fans interested in extracurricular work is the wingnut response to what the tiny, politically-conservative mind tends to view as Tarantino’s point (read: KILLIN' THE EVILDOERS BUT GOOD). Recommended, and Oscar-worthy.

Angels & Demons — This one was far better than the book, which is like saying that gonorrhea is far better than syphilis, but still. Angels & Demons reminded me that, if there was a time when I didn’t want to kick Tom Hanks in the teeth, I can’t remember it anymore. Everything about this movie was vapidly stupid. It made no sense. It was offensive on a very fundamental level — the level that sat through high school history classes, for example. Also, Ewan McGregor was supposed to embody a human metaphor for the traditional model of Lucifer, the beautiful, light-wielding angel cast out of heaven for his misanthropic hubris — which McGregor could’ve done in his sleep, with one hand tied behind his back, and pantsless. Instead, he looked sort of ruddy and uncomfortable, possibly because the movie had robbed his character of any real motivation. Awfulness. AWFULNESS. Not recommended!!!

Hogfather — As with the Harry Potter movies before it, anybody not already familiar with this story would’ve been left behind, scratching their heads, in the first fifteen minutes. The script was ungreat, Teatime was very badly cast, Death overacted like a community theater veteran, and the existential denouement was so retarded and off-kilter (and off-plot) that it made my eyes water — but against my better judgement, I actually kinda liked this one. I liked Susan and Banjo and Albert, and I was really fond of the novel, so I kind of gave it a season pass. What the hell, it’s Christmas. Recommended (especially if you love Pratchett novels).

I’m sure I saw other movies, but I can’t remember what any of them were. Which probably doesn’t bode well for them. Or for me :[