Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Coup attempts, for goodness' sake. It's like living the 80's all over again! Back then I was in grade school, and "coup d'etat" was a fancy word for "no classes".
Anyway, on to some long-winded nerdy ramblings, involving comics and literary references. You have been warned. I got the first Fables graphic novel for Christmas. I wasn't terribly impressed, but it had nice art and a few cool elements; plus I'm a sucker for anything fairytale-related. So today at the comic store when I saw that the Fables: Animal Farm collection was out, I bought it, hoping it might be an improvement on the first book.
Okay, so the idea of a violent revolution of talking animals led by a zealot Goldilocks was pretty cool. But Jungle Book characters?! Just because they're talking animals doesn't make them fairytale characters, damn it! They don't live in Fairyland or Wonderland or Oz, they live in freaking India! And why the freaking DISNEY version of Jungle Book, with "King Louie" and orangutans instead of monkeys? The REAL Kaa would have eaten that damned ape for speaking to him so casually. And if the REAL Shere Khan ever tried to lord it over the REAL Bagheera, Bagheera'd just laugh his ass off at the lame cattle-stealing wuss.
And what was with Reynard the fox being the big hero? Reynard is not a lovable rascal, or a trickster with a heart of gold. He is a cold-blooded bastard who'll cheat you out of house and home and then slit your throat with a smile. I kept expecting it to be revealed what his ulterior motives were for helping the good guys; but it never was. In the end he's just like, "Glad to be of help!" What?!
Um. Yeah, anyway, those are my main nerdy characterization gripes. -_-;; Then there's my usual gripes with the sometimes clunky dialogue and exposition. Overall, the series isn't terrible, but seems a bit overrated. I dunno if I'll be getting any more Fables stuff in the future. No matter how cool Bigby Wolf and Bluebeard are. Martians attacked at 08:49 p.m.! Where were you? ~
Saturday, July 26, 2003
So the other day I finally read that trippy new Jill Thompson Sandman comic, At Death's Door. Keeheehee, everything and everyone is cute. ^^ Dream is all cute and angry and brooding. Remiel and Duma are cute. Del-chan is super-duper-cute. Rowland and Paine are as cute as dead British schoolboys can be. Even Despair gets to be cute for once! But Magical Girl Endless is so, so very dreadfully WRONG. XD
And over here we have early preview image for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, volume III......
...Oh my God, Mina was right, young Quatermain is hot!!!!!11one Well, in a "look at my mustache and generous forehead" sort of way. But still! Future League! I am overcome with wibbles! Martians attacked at 11:50 p.m.! Where were you? ~
Wednesday, July 23, 2003
So we had a real scare last Saturday when Mom answered the phone in the middle of the night and it was some random woman with Carlo's cellphone saying something about him falling down and being rushed to the hospital.
We rushed to the hospital ourselves, and Carlo was there in the E.R. getting his head stitched up, but apparently fine otherwise. Long story short, it seemed he'd had a dizzy spell, fainted in the middle of the Greenbelt mall, and hit his head on the concrete. They kept him in the hospital to do a couple of tests, but by Sunday afternoon the doctor had been in and told us he could go home. He would just have to come back later in the week for more tests, to make sure he doesn't have some serious falling-down disease.
So that was definitely a relief. But several unsettling things occured to me. Last week, our dog Pichu accidentally got some of her hair caught under the tire of a car while it was being pushed out of our garage. She walked away with a big bald bloody scrape, on the back of her head and to one side -- about where Carlo's wound was. Also, on Saturday morning, during my Writing for Film and Television class, we had an exercise: to write a brief sequence treatment based on the nursery rhyme Jack and Jill. I had giggled excessively at my melodramatic treatment of the part where "Jack fell down and broke his crown".
This is one of those instances where I'm sure the universe is trying to tell me something. But I hate to think what it might be. Martians attacked at 10:08 p.m.! Where were you? ~
Friday, July 18, 2003
AAARRRGGH
...I am consumed with heathen desire for transient material goods. I mean, look at that damned thing. LOOK at little Klaus reading the newspaper and little Sunny eating the newspaper while Violet casts a suspicious glance at who appears to be LEMONY FREAKING SNICKET in the background. Curses! WHY? Why am I not holding these papery treasures in my hands RIGHT THIS MINUTE????
And if there's nothing out there, what was that noise? Martians attacked at 04:02 a.m.! Where were you? ~
Thursday, July 17, 2003
So today I finally went out and bought that League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Absolute Hardcover Edition I was drooling over a few weeks ago. It is tremendous, and I mean GIG-NOURMOUS. I have come to the conclusion that it could definitely kick the crap out of a copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. XD The first book is pretty much just like my old Vol. 1 hardcover, except... BIG. It's like suddenly seeing a movie on the big screen after having seen it a billion times on television. The second book, with all the scripts, is quite fascinating. Alan Moore describes EVERYTHING. If I were to write an actual comic script, it would be more like, "Okay, in this panel the two guys are sort of standing there, and the first guy says this or something like it and the other guy sort of looks at him. Then maybe there should be another panel, but I'm not sure." -_-
Interestingly enough, it seems Mina's scarf was originally supposed to be WHITE. Was that considered too "subtle"? Or did it just not match her outfit? ^^ Martians attacked at 08:39 p.m.! Where were you? ~
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
New pages are up for that comic, after three weeks apparently. I've actually had one of those pages for two weeks, and another of them for one week. Dunno why I didn't update them before now. I suck.
Relatives are going to Hong Kong (where apparently SARS is no longer crouching like a tiger). I wonder if they can get me another one of this pen I've been using to ink the comic? It's some Zebra-brand (unreadable Chinese name) brush tip pen I bought on an impulse in a random stationary store on our last HK trip; and it's since proved tremendously useful, but the tip has worn down a bit and can't do the thin lines anymore. The moral of this tale is: when you're in a random foreign stationary store making an impulse purchase, make sure you buy a dozen in case you really like it. And, um, don't bark at asses in mangers, or something. Martians attacked at 06:40 p.m.! Where were you? ~
Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Just got back from seeing Terminator 3. I really wasn't expecting anything from this movie, but... surprisingly, I quite liked it. The fembot with the indestructible hairdo, NotEdwardFurlong!John Connor, and even Claire Danes failed to bug me. There were a couple of neat twists; and I liked Ahnuld's terminator character even better than the one in previous movies, if that makes any sense. He had sass. XD They managed to wring a couple of really cringe-worthy lines out of him ("You ah TERMINATED!") but that's in Ahnuld's contract for every movie he makes.
I have to say I prefer Terminator's vision of future-war-between-man-&-machines better than the one in the Matrix. At least here I can root for the humans, because they aren't stupid idiots who bombed the robots' city and blotted out the sun for no good reason. >___< No, in this case it's the machines who are the idiots. I bet they're kicking themselves for even inventing the T-100 in the first place. Not only did the first one fail to kill John Connor, he's indirectly responsible for John Connor being conceived in the first place. Then all the rest of them keep getting reprogrammed to save John Connor and defeating the supposedly much more advanced terminators. For an old and busted model, Ahnuld does pretty well! Martians attacked at 08:34 p.m.! Where were you? ~
Monday, July 14, 2003
So last Saturday we were supposed to take off for the beach again as soon as I got home from my morning class. Except that my teacher never showed up for the class. I could have stayed in bed, dammit! Anyway, Mom and Carlo and I went to the beach and stayed there until around noon on Sunday. There were far fewer of my friends the cute little scuttling hermit crabs, but I did finally run into the friendly brown jellyfish I remembered from the first time I went to that beach, years ago. There also seemed to be a lot more of my old enemies the mosquitoes -- my legs are itching severely as I type this.
This is a very nicely-written review of Harry Potter book 5. And not just because it makes use of my favorite line in the whole book: "Come here, boy. I need to Disillusion you." "You need to what?" XD
Annnnd, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie is not yet out here. It doesn't seem like it will be opening here for several weeks yet. ARGH. It's the anticipation that's killing me; I just want to see the damn thing already and judge it for myself, without having my expectations raised or lowered by other people's reviews.
Martians attacked at 06:45 p.m.! Where were you? ~
Thursday, July 10, 2003
Hee hee, this is the page I'd been waiting to see since I started reading the darn comic. XD
Okay, gotta go now. I have to see if I can figure out why for the past several days my two-month-old computer has been chugging along slower than a ten-year-old... computer. Martians attacked at 09:10 p.m.! Where were you? ~
Friday, July 4, 2003
HARRY POTTER 5 SPOILER WARNING: I won't be mentioning actual spoilers here, but rather discussing other people's reactions to them. If you don't want to be spoiled, please don't click on the first three or so links. And if you're really, really scared of even inferred spoilers, then maybe you should stop reading altogether. ^^;;
And here we go.
All this hullabaloo over (character)'s death has reached some horrifying new lows. Tearing one's hair out over JKR's "cruelty" and saying that (other, less popular character) should have died instead and posting tons of sappy song lyrics all over one's LiveJournal community is one thing. But do they have to rip off about a gillion different fanartists to make their LJ icons? I can suspend my disbelief that they might've asked Nasubionna and Magsby and other English-speaking fanartists, but are we really supposed to believe that they e-mailed Mauo and Hizashi and Akira Hattori and God knows who else to ask their permission? Riiiiight. This is why Japanese fanartists hate us, you know. -___-;;;
And I, of course, being the incredibly dorky person that I am, still manage to get all misty-eyed when looking at the ripped-off LJ icons with the sappy song lyrics all over them. I swear I cry more easily than a hormonally-imbalanced middle-aged woman. I was never such a sap when I was younger. What's wrong with me? >____< Martians attacked at 01:01 a.m.! Where were you? ~
Wednesday, July 2, 2003
I slept until almost 5 PM today... and I have no idea why. I did go to sleep a little later than usual this morning, but I've gone to bed later and woken up earlier before. What the hell is wrong with me? >____<
At any rate, here is my review for the film Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, which Carlo and I went to see last night. Remember how the first Charlie's Angels movie had such an incredibly complex and multilayered plot, full of thoughtful slow-building drama and rock-solid believability? Well... the sequel manages to dumb it down. Just a little. I loved it like I love greasy potato chips, but I felt a number of my brain cells fleeing for safety out my ears. Though I rather liked Crispin Glover's character, his stupid death didn't bother me all that much, because I was under the impression that he also died in the first movie. Then again, at one point I was also under the impression that he was a robot in the first movie, so I could always be Martians attacked at 11:53 p.m.! Where were you? ~stupid wrong.
E-mail: daedalus@icarusfalls.com
Website: Icarus Falls
Age: 21
Location: Manila, Philippines
Material Desires: see here
How Many Roads Must A Man Walk Down?: 42
FAQ:
Q: What the heck is that?
A: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a cool steampunk-ish comic series by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill which has several prominent literary characters banding together to form a Victorian-era superhero team. Aside from the principal characters, the series also contains cameos and references to just about every bit of fiction ever written in the Victorian era. This layout features the cover from Volume 2, issue 3 of the series. And now that I've finally read the issue in question... LOOK OUT, MINA! Don't run into any invisible and brutally violent psycopaths plotting to sell England out to the Martians! Oh God... X____x
Q: No, I mean this thing. What is it?
A: Oh. Well, it's my weblog. I write junk in it.
Q: No, THIS thing!
A: What, that? That's a walrus. Careful, they're very territorial.
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