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8th March 2010

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Pro-tip for grocery shoppers that have to walk home: what looks like an amount you can walk with is actually twice the amount you can walk with. Keep this advice with you forever.

Nobody wants to be the guy struggling home with about ten full bags of groceries when one splits, dropping toothpaste, detergent, a bottle of orange juice, and two boxes of penne pasta on the street, watching miserably as detergent seeps out on to the street and all over the groceries, kneeling down to pick everything up and covering his pants in detergent, gathering everything back together and heading on with his aching arms, feeling an odd mix of gratefulness and shame when a nice man pulls up beside you asking where you’re headed and having to admit you can’t even make it one more block, sweating and swearing profusely.

Nobody.

Least of all me.

8th March 2010

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Alice in Severely Underwhelmedland

Spoilers ahead, proceed with caution.

Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland is wonderful and surreal and — most importantly — a complete fantasy. Tim Burton’s Wonderland? Bullshit. I hated almost every second of it. It’s possible that the original novel, Disney’s 1951 film, and my anticipation tainted my expectations, but this much? I don’t think so.

I don’t want to go in to detail — we have movie critics for that — but I really didn’t find much to like. The way the world was drawn seemed drab and lifeless, and somehow incomplete, like the movie was rushed out the door a few months before it was actually finished. (I saw it in 2D, not 3D.) Honestly, it kind of looks like it was made 5 years ago. There are a number of moments, mostly involving the Red Queen, where the animation is just awful. I didn’t like many of the characters, either: the Mad Hatter severely underwhelmed, the Cheshire Cat was boring, and the White Queen, who seemed like she might have learning difficulties, has possibly the worst make-up job ever. I did like Alice’s character, the Red Queen, and the Tweedles, though. Whoever decided to give Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee the face of Matt Lucas made the best decision in the entire movie, as far as I’m concerned. Worst decision of the movie? “Underland.” That’s the real name of Wonderland, apparently.

The story was the worst thing of all, though. The magic of Wonderland, for me at least, was that anything could happen and what did happen made no sense at all. The possibilities were limited only by Alice’s imagination. In this telling, which is supposed to be a sequel, Wonderland (sorry, Underland) actually exists, or appears to, and there are destined ones, and fore-tellings, and lore, and blah blah blah. Basically: it’s your typical fantasy-action movie, with quests and journeys and warring factions, right up to the anti-climactic climax with The Big Fight That We Already Know The Protagonist Wins. Yawn.

And by the way? (MAJOR SPOILER — LIKE TOTALLY SPOILING THE END OF THE MOVIE-LEVEL SPOILER — FOLLOWS.) The person that slays the Jabberwocky? It was supposed to be a dude. (Not that I’m a stickler for total accuracy, but c’mon!)

(I’d like to apologise for this post’s shitty title.)

5th March 2010

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I don’t have my own phone in the US yet, so whenever I need to make a phone call or send a text to someone, I use Heather’s phone. Effectively, we share a phone.

Whenever our friend Alex calls us, she hands the phone to me. She’s known him for years, and I’ve known him less than a year, yet he is “my bro,” which trumps chick-on-dude friendship, apparently. Whenever our friend Lori calls us, I make sure Heather answers it, because I don’t want to speak to a female that isn’t Heather, in case I try to have sex with her.

Alex and Lori are dating, and live together. They have similar rules to ours, so: whenever one of them wants to speak to Heather, Lori makes the call and whenever one of them wants to speak to me, Alex makes the call. However, Lori forgot to pay her phone bill, so they’re sharing Alex’s phone for now.

And then last night. Lori wants to know if Heather and I want to come over. Lori makes the call, because she’s calling Heather’s phone, but she’s calling from Alex’s phone. So, Heather sees Alex’s name and gives me the phone, and I answer it.

And— I SAID DON’T CROSS THE STREAMS!

3rd March 2010

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The exceeding water, that remains in the little tank has the purpose to avoid the overheating and the blackening of the steel

A sample of the charming Engrish in the istruzioni d’uso that came with my moka pot, for which I’ve been waiting patiently for, oh boy, days.