I was a bit bored and depressed earlier this week, I guess. I feel okay at the moment. My mood has been affected a lot by the uncertain house sale/move situation, really, although we have a (possible) lead on a new home right now. More later, probably!
Read More »Diagnosis Boredom
It was great news to hear that Ali Ismail Abbas has been flown to Kuwait and is receiving proper medical care. On a more cynical note, how good it was of Mr. Blair to condescend to ‘comment’ on the situation. But I’m not going to have another war rant…
Monday, I went to buy the video of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. A bit of extra money came our way, and since this counts as extravagance in our current impoverished state, what the hell! We watched it Monday night.
I thought the first HP movie was just okay. This one was a huge improvement, although as each of the books is longer than the last, there was much more condensing. Arguably, the plots also get better, so perhaps a stronger plot suffers less from omission. It was fast-moving and slick. The younger cast were much more polished. Robbie Coltrane was his usual awesome self. The FX were much better, in particular Dobby the house elf… I thought they might mess him up, but he was a wonderful CGI creation, furnished with a wide range of extremely realistic and endearing mannerisms.
Yep, another top ten. Which I might have posted earlier, but I had something to do (more later), plus I didn’t finish writing the list out until around noon. And so:
TOP TEN BOOKS (fiction)
01. The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887-1927) Fiction’s greatest detective. Over a span of 56 short stories and four novels, the quality is a mixed bag—the worst can be quite dull, the best simply magnificent. Almost all of them have great moments. Doyle was the reluctant creator of a true legend.
Just for trivial interest and amusement: recent search engine strings (mostly via Google) that led people to this site…
Read More »Searching for Something?
Today is a nice day. I’m not a big weather fan, but today it’s sunny without being dazzling and fairly warm without being unpleasantly hot. (If blinding sun and blistering heat is your thing, you may not agree with me.)
I had a brief errand to do this morning, and instead of my usual approach—to rush to my destination as fast as possible and hurry back—I took a longer route through our nearby park, pulled off my jacket and wandered around dreamily for a while. It was really nice. I didn’t even fret about skin cancer! (I’m very pale and get little sunlight…) There were a few people about, but the place seemed so peaceful and relaxing. I’ve forgotten what relaxing is in recent times, i.e. probably the last 20 years! Must do this again sometime; since our dog got ill (and later died), going through places like parks just hasn’t crossed my mind.
Read More »Pleasant Atmosphere
Or, is the war over? (Same link as yesterday—current Middle East news from BBC—so if you’re reading this in 2004, it will likely be irrelevant!) Okay, okay, enough about the damned war!
Having mentioned the new David Suchet Poirot episodes the other day, I thought I might as well give a link to the story here. The first (of at least three) will be Death on the Nile. I can’t wait!
Read More »Death on the Nile
The war seems to be almost over. I’m quite shocked at the swiftness with which Baghdad has seemingly been (largely) secured after the significant resistance encountered in smaller areas (i.e. Basra). But I’m thankful for this. It will hopefully save a lot of lives, and that is always the most important factor.
Read More »The End is Near?
Today’s war news: the coalition aces have bombed Mansour, because Saddam ‘might’ have been there, and blitzed the Palestine Hotel where numerous journalists were based. We don’t know if they got Saddam or not, of course, but we do know they blasted another bunch of civilians (you know, the ones they’re ‘liberating’) into the next world based on their so-called ‘intelligence.’
I’ve said it before: I just want it to end…
Read More »Bombing for Freedom
A new Monday feature: Top Tens. For the next few weeks, anyway. This week I’ll try to list my…
TOP TEN MOVIES
Only about half of these movies would always make my list, no matter what; the rest is prone to change daily. Listed in no particular order…
01. King Kong (1933) Sentimental choice, of course—the four-year-old me who first saw this was spellbound. Today? It still it has a marvellous sense of wonder.
Movies. We have watched movies. Which was nice.
Thursday night, we finally got round to seeing From Hell. The original Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell graphic novel was one of the few recent comics I’d fancied reading, but I never got round to that either. I don’t know how faithful the movie is. But there are worse ways to kill a couple of hours.
Johnny Depp’s cod Michael Caine accent was perhaps questionable, but who cares? The Deppster is Godlike. *sigh* Acting-wise, I guess the invincible Robbie Coltrane stole the show. I love Robbie.
Read More »Movies & Stuff
