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July 12th, 2009
11:21 am - Asbo... oh... oh...
I do feel some sympathy for the irritated neighbours of this woman, but I still think the Asbo is a complete tool of fascism.
(Mind you, there is some bizarre amusement value in the fact that the Asbo only applies "anywhere in England." Apparently it's okay for her to go annoy the Welsh or the Scots or the Northern Irish...)
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July 10th, 2009
July 8th, 2009
July 5th, 2009
July 4th, 2009
09:30 am - ID2009
Happy birthday to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) broken_gizmo, and to the USA, too.
In other news, the quote of the day (so far):
"Truly, Sarah Palin has come a long way. When she ran for vice president, she frequently became disjointed and garbled when she departed from her prepared remarks. Now the prepared remarks are incoherent, too."—Gail Collins, "Sarah's Straight Talk", The New York Times
Edit: More on Palin's speech:
"The style is closer to a high schooler's angry diary entry than to an official speech. I've read a lot of speech transcripts. They tend to have fewer words in all capital letters. And fewer things in quotation marks that aren't actually, you know, quotes."—Ezra Klein, "Sarah Palin Resigns", The Washington Post
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July 3rd, 2009
June 29th, 2009
05:49 pm - Quote of the day...
"Atheism is a belief system like bald is a hairstyle."
—Sally, Surbiton, Surrey, commenting on this Times article
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June 22nd, 2009
June 15th, 2009
June 3rd, 2009
May 31st, 2009
10:54 am - Especially those of us who saw _The War Zone_...
"...it wasn’t done badly. What was odd was the casting. The whole thing revolved around the question: do you want to see Ray Winstone have sex? To which the answer for most of us is a horrified, falsetto no."—A.A. Gill's review of the British TV drama Compulsion in The Times
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May 29th, 2009
06:10 pm - Mmm.
I know Matthew Parris is actually talking about the UK's current (entertainingly wretched) political situation, but what I took away from this article was primarily: ooooh, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in Waiting For Godot. Wish I was in London...
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May 28th, 2009
May 26th, 2009
02:34 pm - Fourth time around
Today was my fourth summons for jury duty and the first time I actually made it into a courtroom. (I was impanelled last time, but the case was settled or pled or dropped before we could be seated.) This was a criminal case: a breaking-and-entering charge, with a white male defendent and four white female witnesses (one from the police department).
I didn't make the initial cut of seven people, but defense counsel exercised one of his peremptory challenges and I was picked to replace the rejected juror. Just for a moment there, I thought I might actually see a case... and then the prosecutor exercised one of his peremptory challenges and threw me out. Still not wanted on the voyage of justice.
Was it the bleak smile I gave the prosecutor as I sat down in the jury box? Was it because I, as a white male (the only one to have been seated so far) might have been presumed to identify somehow with the defendent? Did I just look too liberal, maybe, like someone who'd let a breaker-and-enterer go purely on principle? We'll never know.
In other news, the quote of the day is from A. O. Scott of The New York Times, in his review of Angels & InsectsDemons:I have not read the novel by Dan Brown on which this film… is based. I have come to believe that to do so would be a sin against my faith, not in the Church of Rome but in the English language, a noble and beleaguered institution against which Mr. Brown practices vile and unspeakable blasphemy.
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May 23rd, 2009
11:02 am - That day again.
...and after 15 years, it feels much like any other day, really. Everything I said five years ago seems even more true now.
Thanks to everyone who's helped me to get this far.
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May 22nd, 2009
04:38 pm - I'm not sure about "untested"...
The police have decided not to bother upholding the law of the land because their chief constables “have more pressing priorities”, according to the Association of Chief Police Officers. I think that this is one of my favourite quotes of this or any other year and supports my untested thesis that Britain is being used as a gigantic LSD experiment, perhaps by aliens.—Rod Liddle, The Times
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May 10th, 2009
11:59 am - Film roundup
So I walked out of the new Star Trek movie last night after 20 minutes... but only because the centre channel volume was set so low that I couldn't hear the dialogue over the gaggle of high-school-aged girls near me who wouldn't stop talking. I sneaked into the next showing, on a different screen, with a much better-behaved audience, and this time I really enjoyed the crap out of the movie. It's not perfect, of course, and maybe some of its flaws will be magnified for me when I see it again, but damn if I didn't come out on a pure nerd high. (Oh, and wellstar? It might be worth adding some mention of this flick to your summer project, although I doubt a DVD will be available in time.)
I should have walked out of X-Men Origins: Wolverine on Tuesday night, but I kept thinking that it just had to get better. Important life lesson here: no, it really didn't. I'm astonished that they were able to make an X-Men movie significantly worse than X3: that must have taken some real effort. The actors don't embarrass themselves, but everything else (writing, direction, effects, cinematography, choreography, even editing) makes up a near-perfect exhibit of No-One Involved In The Making Of This Movie Actually Gave A Damn syndrome. I have, for my sins, seen worse movies in the cinema (Joe's Apartment, I'm looking at you), but that's saying much.
Still. Trek. Well worth waiting for.
(I'm also enjoying the first-season Trek Blu-ray set with both the original and "remastered" effects/soundtracks. The changes aren't actually all bad, and my purist side is kept in check by the presence of the original versions on the same discs. I didn't buy the "remasters" separately on DVD, and still wouldn't, but as extras they're pretty enjoyable.)
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April 7th, 2009
03:45 pm - RD A-Z
The Times has an article on the upcoming Red Dwarf: Back to Earth one-off which includes a fair bit of potentially-interesting RD trivia.
There's a little "evri" utility on the web page which offers to let me "see full profile" for "Scouser Dave Lister". Um...
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12:51 pm - Well.
The Vermont legislature overrode the governor's veto and made same-sex marriage legal in VT.
The Beatles remasters were finally announced (for 9 September), and will include stereo, mono, and (in a few cases) original-1965-stereo mixes.
iTunes is now DRM-free.
I know it's not all good news out there, but it's nice to see the upbeat nuggets anyway.
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