Ads and Artemis
I can’t really pretend this is an unusual thing anymore – once again, I am flicking between Video Hits and Rage. But that’s not the point of this post. No: the point is Britney Spears, and not even her ‘music’. The ad was for her new perfume. Basically, I think she’s heard the story of Artemis and Aktaeon, and got it mixed up a bit in her head. In the ad, she (the goddess, of course), is being pursued by a hunter, who has fallen in love with her; he shoots her with a ‘magic love arrow’ or somesuch (so maybe Aktaeon and Eros have got mixed up in her head… who’s to say?), and they live happily ever after. Very curious. And all of this, of course, takes place in a forest… very primal.
ASif! and volunteering
No, I’m not reverting to adolescence here. Aus Specific in Focus is a new website dedicated to reviewing all the Aussie scifi and fantasy it can get its hands on. I’ve volunteered to review stuff, starting with Garth Nix, of course. Looks like it will be great fun.
http://www.asif.dreamhosters.com/
I’ve also started doing proofreading for the Digital Proofreaders, for Project Gutenberg. You just sign up and start proofing… I haven’t had anything proofed at the second round yet (there’s at least two, if not three I think, rounds of proofing), so I don’t know if there is anything that I should be doing that I haven’t. Currently I am doing pages of Wordsworth poetry. I don’t have to stick with this, which I started on, but I think I will stick with it – might as well help it get through.
Zoe is my hero
We’re re-watching Serenity. I love it. Zoe really is fantastic.
I aim to misbehave…
Huckabees again
Naomi Watts is really fatastic in this movie… for most of the movie, she’s only been a voice and the occasional face; now she’s onto the Existential Detectives, and she’s trying to figure out whether or not to be pretty…
I [heart] Huckabees
I wrote quite a long post, for me, about this movie, which I’m watching at the moment. It got et by the puter because for whatever reason, I lost the internet for a minute. I don’t think I can be bothered writing it all again. It involved:
— I’m watching it because of seeing it reviewed on The Movie Show, and David loved it.
— I’m watching it for something completely different from what I would usually watch, although it is a little bit like The Life Aquatic (but better)
— The cast is excellent. Dustin Hoffman is a legend, and so is Lily Tomlin; Mark Wahlberg is surprisingly good, and Jude Law plays a total prat.
— OK, the bit that I just watched, with the mud and sex and stuff – that was really damn weird.
— This is a really, really funny movie; I’m loving it.
Attila the Hun
I’ve been fascinated by Attila for a while, at least partly because there seems to be so little actually known about him and he – along with his Huns – have become synonymous with evil bad rampaging Vandals (with whom they were contemporaneous – lovely). So when I saw a bio of him written by John Man, who I just love after reading Alpha Beta and The Gutenberg Revolution, I was very impressed. And I am still impressed after reading it. He does a lot to make his work accessible, and bring the subject to life: I wonder how many other would-be biographers of Attila would go to Hungary and find the man who has, single-handedly, basically reinvented the art of horse-mounted archery? And from he description, this is quite an amazing feat.
So anyway, finally I have an understanding of where Attila actually fits into the whole world history picture. I also really appreciated Man spending a chapter on later representations of Attilla and the Huns, since I never understood why the Germans suddenly became Huns in WWI. Plus, to read about the near-veneration of Attila frm modern Hungarians is also eye-opening; that old chestnut about one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter…
Lost another fish
This time it was a rasbora. This is maybe the second or third fish in about three weeks. I wonder if they are all getting old, or if there is something up with the tank… I must admit that I am a bad fishkeeper, and have not done any tests on the tank water in a very, very long time (and I do mean a loooong time). Perhaps I should do that.
Earth, Air, Fire… Custard…
New Tom Holt book – woohoo! And that really is the title. One of the partners at JW Wells and Co has created a new dimension, the substance of which bears a remarkable resemblance to, yes, custard. So cool.
I really do like Paul, the lead character in these three Wells books; he is just so normal. I like that he isn’t always expressing amazement at the bizarro things going on around him, because I think that – like him – I would just get to a point where amazement is just boring and you just go “yeh, whatever….”
So basically, it’s a good book. Enertaining, weird, twisty-turny, and just now and again laugh-out-loud-funny.
New computer
It’s all very exciting. This is a test page to see whether my new widget, WordPressDash, actually works. If it does, I can see blogging becoming a lot more frequent, since it will be a lot easier to do than previously! If the reference to a widget doesn’t give it away – I’m now on The Forbidden Fruit. My old Toshiba blew up (well, not quite, but almost), so J bought me an Apple! Joy! I’m just now learning all the tricks and good things to go wih it, so it might be a while before I can use it with quite the deftness that J expects… I do like that it rips my CDs very quickly. Noice.
Randomly Yours, Alex 