U-571
My goodness. I hadn’t realised how bad submarine movies could get. I guess we have been spoiled, with Red October and K-19: The Widowmaker, but still! Largely boring action bits that don’t compensate for no character development. Disappointing… and you hardly hear boo from Bon Jovi, so even that potentially entertaining bit is squished.
Pft. Boring.
Kids’ books
I took advantage of Borders and their 3 for 2 sale yesterday. I got The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek, Possum Magic, and Animalia! Very exciting. They’re not entirely for me, of course… at least one of them will go as a present to the Nankervis clan on Wednesday since I didn’t send a present when Aidan was born (like a year ago or something). However, it is a great deal of fun to read them. And of course I also bought Avocado Baby ages ago… that was a good purchase; no one is getting that one as a present any time soon.
On a completely different note, I think I might have misplaced my Bowie CD.
Later: they forgot to take a book! I’ll have to send them one now.
Also: this is what I like; talking via comments on the blog, rather than email or some other media.
Noticeably less algae
The advantage of having highly descriptive titles in posts is that you don’t have to write as much in the body of the text.
I think I’ll leave the lights off for at least today, and then see what happens tomorrow when they go back on again.
Lights and algae
We turned the light off yesterday – well, I did, in a fit of pique and an effort to reduce our chronic algae issues (iss-ues). I’m sick of the disgusting matting effect over the gravel and the plants, and I’ve heard that this can help. So we’ll see. As yet we haven’t covered it up to hide it from the daylight; thought we’d try this first. James thinks it might be getting more light now than it used to, and that might explain why it’s there.
Class distinctions
I’ve been thinking about class distinctions and their representations.
Actually, I started by thinking about war. How is this for degrees of separation?
— Reading Tomorrow, When the War began with my Yr9 class
— Doing war poetry at the end of this semester, to get them thinking about the realities
–Someone suggested watching something like Toy Soldiers, because it’s about a school taken over by terrorists.
— Sean Astin stars in it
— Sean Astin is also Sam Gamgee
— Thinking about explaining the relationship between Sam and Frodo, because I’m sure some would see it as at least hinting at homosexuality (“It’s me, Mr Frodo, your own Sam…”).
— Deciding I would say something like “It’s a sentimental, nostalgic take on the ideal relationship between a man and his closest servant” – which, thinking about it and then remembering Biggles, is often also attributed to an officer and his batman.
— “A MAN and his servant”?!?!
That’s when I realised that that phrase completely de-sexualises, and disempowers, the lower class. Quite a realisation.
As well, of course, I’m sure that it was mostly an upper-class idealisation; I wonder if the lower class visualisation would have had the two on a more equal footing?
Willow
Not the tree, the movie. Kate come over last night for dinner and brought it with her. I hadn’t seen it in ages, so it was lots of fun. Such a young Val Kilmer! And nobody else I recognised. It must have been a great day for the dwarfish (dwarvish? and is that the PC term?) community when it was made, since they actually used real short people rather than lots of special effects (which they couldn’t anyway, since it was made in the 80s or something). We were convinced that one of the brownies was Flacco, but I don’t think he was. I might show it to my year 9s if ever I get a chance to do my fantasy unit, since I think they would be less likely to laugh at this than they might at Labyrinth (pft; no sense of style).
Randomly Yours, Alex 