La la la

Happy Birthday to the lovely ivy03! I am daily glad you are my good friend what makes with the co-squeeing and wonder over stuffs. I predict the future will only see further enmeshing of our shared interests, which should be alternately pretty awesome and very terrifying. Anyway, happy happy birthday! I look forward to toasting your good health in person at a later date.

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LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: WE HAVE US A RORSCHACH!

Well, his IMDB profile is hardly hopeful (he seems to have stopped working for some thirteen years after a none-too-productive career with such high points as Profit of Evil: The Ervil LeBaron Story before his hiatus). However, he is not Keanu Reeves; he is not a thirty-year-old who'll be aged up for the role; and, honestly, he's pretty funny looking, which is perfect. He was also nominated for an Oscar last year. I have now bumped Little Children up the queue at Netflix. When I know more, so shall the rest of y'all.

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Tried to watch Ran, failed. It's like three hours long, and I just got back from Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer (more on that at a later point), so I'm tired of movies (!). Too tired to watch a three-hour adaptation of King Lear anyway. I hate Lear. I really do. The fact that the stupid youngest daughter doesn't just suck up to her dad bugs the shit out of me. In Ran, at least, the youngest son who loses favor with his war-lord father has a good point about his reasons for not sucking up: basically, daddy raised himself three little war-lord juniors and he should know better than to expect loyalty and filial piety from them as a result. There, at least, I can agree. Still, not interested, not for all that it had swords standing in for phalli all over the place. Oh well. I might do better with Rashomon or Seven Samurai if I want to expose myself to more Kurosawa.

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Toilet may be fixed...by me! I gave on trying to get the super in to look at the damned thing. We called him all weekend, and I harassed his daughter in the basement and she could only, helpfully, tell me that she had no idea when he'd be around. I took a screwdriver to the bolt that seems to have the leak and I think it's fixed (or, at least, leaking less). I'm still going to want him to look at it, but at least the thing won't flood the place while I wait three years for this guy. Now all I need to do is buy a new bathmat.

I'll give him a chance to look at the toilet, see if he can fix it for good. If not, I call the management company and complain. I need to call them anyway about what the electrician told me about the light fixtures. Sigh.

Fantastic Four: Ris

That's what my ticket said, anyway.

A short, non-spoilery reactions to Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, a sampler:
darkling1: If I never see another superhero dance, it'll be too soon.

Stan Lee cameos as...Stan Lee!
darkling1: These are getting more and more shameless.

The military decides it's time for their union coffee break, leaving a prison behind in a room by himself. With no guards or cameras in the room.
Me: From the crack team that brought you the guards on Prison Break...

ivy03: (thirty minutes into the movie) Does Dr. Doom ever say anything that's NOT a cliche for a villain?
Me: (An hour and fifteen minutes into the movie) No.

Credits roll, including one for Jessica Alba's hairstylist
Me: You are so fired.

Silly fun time had by all for the most part. Largest gripes were over the deliberate fugli-fication of the hot people. Why mess with a good thing, I ask you? ( Seriously, WTF? )

(Wow, that turned into a rant! What a surprise!) And I fixed the links. Stupid Superherohype...

At least we got treated to a nice scene where Johnny Storm had his shirt off again for little to no reason. I think that if that were the running motif for as many of these as they make, I could have no complaints (none that would be listened to, anyway). I mean the benefits of Chris Evans running around half naked are not to be discounted when one (erm, a female one) is watching a movie.

Note: I did try to find a picture that made him with his shirt off where he didn't look like a gay escort pin-up, but there doesn't seem to be one. I wonder...

Stupid Feminist Spoil-Sport

My Uncle, he of the many inappropriate, downright racist, conservative "joke" e-mails, has done it again.

( The latest atrocity: Women Explained by Engineers )

The five offensive parts can be summed up thusly:
WYMUN R PROBLEMS! THEY IS VOLATILE LIEK CHEMI-KALS. HA HA HA MAN NEVER WIN FIGHTS! MAKING SEX GOOD FOR WOMEN 2 HARD! BITCHES SPEND TOO MUCH TIME AND $$ AT THE MALL.

I find that all so hilarious. So I said as much. Not violently, not angrily (as best I could, at any rate), and even with self-censored vulgarity kept to a minimum. My response to the family is the same as the all-caps above but with less rage:
"Aren't stereotypes so much more fun than real humor? Ha ha ha, women are irritable, capricious b****es, ha ha ha! Oh God, they go to a mall, and they spend all their man's money! It's so true! Ha hahaha!"

My aunt (this offending uncle's sister) seemed almost insulted that I would dare take issue with being portrayed as some kind of unstable collection of needlessly troublesome, expensive molecules She's timid and sweet, so the insult is between-the-lines of her reply to my reply. It's also subtly hostile and a swipe at what is obviously being taken as my crazy hippie liberal love of PC-ness gone amok:
"I confess I'm still giggling about Part IV on the prior one...Given trinityvixen's warning about the stereotyping I'm gonna reframe from putting it up at the office...don't want the one man on our staff of 27 to experience any harassment, so I will take down the mail, thanks for the heads up."

He does it for the chance to set me off (bravo, it worked), but her response is the greater disappointment for being the subtler dig at my--rightly--indignant response to being considered a thorn in the side of a hard-working, straight-talking, plain-dealing, no-sissifying good-ol'-boy. My uncle, at least, doesn't believe these things (he finds it amusing to paint himself as so responsible, but his wife is very clearly the level-headed thrifty one in their relationship--did I ever tell y'all he used to be a professional clown?), but it's clear to me my aunt, though she genuinely doesn't want to offend anyone, doesn't see why I don't just laugh off the misogyny. 'Cause that's clearly how you make it go away--just laugh and pretend being considered shallow is a compliment. GRRR.

(My last response to her e-mail, unless anyone actually--GASP!--wants to start a reasonable dialogue over stereotypes and whom they hurt was this:
"I only took umbrage at the last one because I'm one of many a girl who hates shopping for clothes at the mall and would just as soon take the "Family Circus" route drawn on that map and fix it in a straight line--one that started in Best Buy and dead-ended in a GameStop. Plus, I spend my own monies for such purchases. Call me a sour-puss for not taking with a "sense of humor" the idea that I go to the mall explicitly with wasting time and money on my mind (I prefer to think of it as "an investment"--see, THAT is funny). The truly advanced shopper does her homework before going and knows what she's looking for when she gets there (hence why I didn't buy one version of a DVD at Best Buy when I knew I could get it cheaper online!)."
Hopefully, the more "humor" I throw in, the more they know I'm not mad at them per se, just the idealogy.)