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3 or 4 days since The Traumatic Spider Incident, depending on how you figure the timeline (whether, for example, 4 am counts as Tuesday night or Wednesday morning - I call it Tuesday night since it felt like the same night to me), and the initial terror and rage have faded. Turns out that my baby is not completely busted - she still works fine. It's just the light bulb behind the screen that's broken, and that can be repaired. I'll be laptopless for a day or four back at school, but the knowledge that I shall one day have my baby returned to me is consolation enough.
I'm once again at home for fall break - "break" here meaning "long weekend", which means I've only got a day or two to be off the grindstone, really. And that Bio project is bearing down on my head like the End of Days (and I still haven't a merry clue what I'm doing), so I have a feeling that the minute I set foot back on collegiate soil, I will feel just as exhausted and frazzled as ever. And will resume my habit of not sleeping. And will still do nothing to reform my study habits and make them slightly more effective. And will continue to subsist on cereal and crap food. Yay.
If there's a good thing about The Traumatic Spider Incident, it's that maybe a few days without my laptop which teach me to organize my priorities properly. I won't be able to putz away hours on the internet in the safety and privacy in my room; I'll have to actually go somewhere with the express purpose of internetsing. And, since I'm using public computers, things I would normally only do in the privacy of my room - like rewatch "Last of the Time Lords" a billion times, write fic, read fic, watch the Angry Alien movies, or research TV wikis to canon-check my fic - are off-limits. This is good (sort of), since those are by far my most time-wasting activities; in theory I'll now have no choice but to work. In theory. Not that the lack of computer will do anything to change my reading/music-listening/TV/beading habits.
I'd forgotten how pushy my dog was. Stop poking me, Scarlett; I'm typing.
I went to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age today, and found it meh. In an artistic sense, it's a sumptuously beautiful movie. The costume design alone is a sight to behold - it's almost worth the matinee price just to gaze at the exacting detail on all these gowns and tunics and veils and wigs. And the cinematography is equally beautiful; every frame feels like a portrait. Watching Cate Blanchett do anything at all is always a pleasure, so she was wonderful in this movie, particularly when she got to break out her Great Big Queenly Voice.
But the dialogue, more often than not, felt stilted, scripted, unreal even in the highly formalized context of the Elizabethan Court. Scenes that should have been emotionally charged felt as stiff as Milady's lace-encrusted bodices. And, in spite of the fact that the Spanish are major players in this movie, there's only one actor among them who has an even passingly acceptable Spanish accent. Trust me, when a non-native speaker such as myself think the Spanish-spoken dialogue sounds horribly fake and English, you're doing it wrong.
It doesn't help that Philip of Spain - one of history's more interesting royal personnages, in my opinion, right up there with Louis XIV and Frederick William I - is reduced to a snivelling, mincing, super-oily megalomaniac with a weird fixation on his daughter and her Queen Elizabeth Voodoo Barbie. And I know you don't go to movies like this for historical accuracy, but there were mistakes in here that I just can't overlook, like the fact that Sir Walter Raleigh has been jackhammered into the story purely because he's pretty. And don't get me wrong, Clive Owen is very pretty, and I appreciated the long, lingering shots of his gorgeous eyes and studly jawline even if most of his dialogue was odd. But there's absolutely no excuse for writing Sir Francis Drake out of the battle with the Spanish Armada. He was the freaking second-in-command. Walter Raleigh wasn't even THERE. *thwaps movie*
*ahem* I'm done now.
Perhaps I will ramble at greater length about my adventures in computerlessness later, but, as usual, formulating thoughts on a computer that is not my baby in inexplicably difficult. For now, in closing, I can only say that I adore my big sister, and am so glad I dragged her out of the fandom closet so we can squee together. And I am so writing my own version of the "where-are-my-pants" ficbunny at some point. In fact, it may be my first official act on my repaired laptop.
*squeezes big sis*
I'm once again at home for fall break - "break" here meaning "long weekend", which means I've only got a day or two to be off the grindstone, really. And that Bio project is bearing down on my head like the End of Days (and I still haven't a merry clue what I'm doing), so I have a feeling that the minute I set foot back on collegiate soil, I will feel just as exhausted and frazzled as ever. And will resume my habit of not sleeping. And will still do nothing to reform my study habits and make them slightly more effective. And will continue to subsist on cereal and crap food. Yay.
If there's a good thing about The Traumatic Spider Incident, it's that maybe a few days without my laptop which teach me to organize my priorities properly. I won't be able to putz away hours on the internet in the safety and privacy in my room; I'll have to actually go somewhere with the express purpose of internetsing. And, since I'm using public computers, things I would normally only do in the privacy of my room - like rewatch "Last of the Time Lords" a billion times, write fic, read fic, watch the Angry Alien movies, or research TV wikis to canon-check my fic - are off-limits. This is good (sort of), since those are by far my most time-wasting activities; in theory I'll now have no choice but to work. In theory. Not that the lack of computer will do anything to change my reading/music-listening/TV/beading habits.
I'd forgotten how pushy my dog was. Stop poking me, Scarlett; I'm typing.
I went to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age today, and found it meh. In an artistic sense, it's a sumptuously beautiful movie. The costume design alone is a sight to behold - it's almost worth the matinee price just to gaze at the exacting detail on all these gowns and tunics and veils and wigs. And the cinematography is equally beautiful; every frame feels like a portrait. Watching Cate Blanchett do anything at all is always a pleasure, so she was wonderful in this movie, particularly when she got to break out her Great Big Queenly Voice.
But the dialogue, more often than not, felt stilted, scripted, unreal even in the highly formalized context of the Elizabethan Court. Scenes that should have been emotionally charged felt as stiff as Milady's lace-encrusted bodices. And, in spite of the fact that the Spanish are major players in this movie, there's only one actor among them who has an even passingly acceptable Spanish accent. Trust me, when a non-native speaker such as myself think the Spanish-spoken dialogue sounds horribly fake and English, you're doing it wrong.
It doesn't help that Philip of Spain - one of history's more interesting royal personnages, in my opinion, right up there with Louis XIV and Frederick William I - is reduced to a snivelling, mincing, super-oily megalomaniac with a weird fixation on his daughter and her Queen Elizabeth Voodoo Barbie. And I know you don't go to movies like this for historical accuracy, but there were mistakes in here that I just can't overlook, like the fact that Sir Walter Raleigh has been jackhammered into the story purely because he's pretty. And don't get me wrong, Clive Owen is very pretty, and I appreciated the long, lingering shots of his gorgeous eyes and studly jawline even if most of his dialogue was odd. But there's absolutely no excuse for writing Sir Francis Drake out of the battle with the Spanish Armada. He was the freaking second-in-command. Walter Raleigh wasn't even THERE. *thwaps movie*
*ahem* I'm done now.
Perhaps I will ramble at greater length about my adventures in computerlessness later, but, as usual, formulating thoughts on a computer that is not my baby in inexplicably difficult. For now, in closing, I can only say that I adore my big sister, and am so glad I dragged her out of the fandom closet so we can squee together. And I am so writing my own version of the "where-are-my-pants" ficbunny at some point. In fact, it may be my first official act on my repaired laptop.
*squeezes big sis*
cold
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