Blargh.

[missroserose]

I want to go home. But I can't for two more hours.

I could rant here about my crappy morning and lack of sleep due to intestinal problems last night, but instead I'm going to steal an idea from cyranocyrano, because it might help to pass the remains of the workday faster:

It's Friday. Ask me a question.

Comments

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

If you could have any one superpower, what would it be and why? How would you use it? Would it be for good, or for awesome? Would you wear a costume?

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Points given for thoroughness. Points taken away for lack of creativity. Also, I said "a question", not "lots of questions". =P But since no one seems to be immediately jumping on the bait, I might as well answer.

Let's see, superpower..."flying" is the answer almost everyone gives, "invisibility" makes me sound like a creepy voyeur, "breathe/see underwater" would be nifty but somewhat limited, "super strength" is a bit masculine. Hm.

Maybe it's just that I'm rereading Libba Bray's excellent Gemma Doyle series, but I think one of the most fun powers would be the power of illusion. We humans tend to trust our senses pretty blindly, and being able to play with what someone perceives opens up all sorts of fun possibilities - especially on days when I'm feeling particularly vindictive..."Ms. Coulter! Our sources tell us that you spent all of your European vacation huddled on the floor of your hotel room, convinced that you were surrounded by demonic fire-breathing cats! Do you have any comment?"

On the other hand, living with a power like that would probably mean never quite knowing who you were, exactly, because people wouldn't react to you; they'd only react to their mental image of you. But then, that's probably not so different from real life; you'd just have a bit more control over what their image of you was.

Hm, I sense a potential story in here somewhere...

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

Hey now, that's a plenty creative question! Hmph.

I like your superpower idea. AND I love the example of what you'd do with it. :-)

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Your favorite movie of the 2000s? (Not necessarily best, but favorite.)

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Ooh, you cut out one of my all-time favorites (American Beauty) by one year; I think it came out in 1999. So let me think, 2000s...

As an aside, I'm kind of picky about the movies I watch, because I don't really watch that many. However, this means that most of the movies I see, I end up liking. So my definition of "favorite" comes from the ones that inspired the strongest reactions, those that were most memorable, the ones that really made me think "This is why I love movies." By that criteria, I'd say that the strongest contenders are V for Vendetta and Juno. But I might think of a few more later.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Actually, Beauty would've been my first reflexive pick; I didn't see it until 2000. I haven't seen Juno yet, though I do love me some Ellen Page. And V is definitely in my top, er, five.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Re: Beauty - same here. I first saw it while sleeping over at a friend's house my senior year of high school, and (for all this sounds like a cliche) it rocked my teenage world. I had felt for much of high school that the perfect suburban adult life we're supposed to aspire to seemed so empty, and that movie not only acknowledged that it was, in fact, the case, but also inspired me to look past things like wealth and to place more value on things that were worth valuing (myself, my relationships, etc.). So it will always be one of my favorites.

Definitely go see Juno as soon as you possibly can. I went to see it twice at the local theater, and given my previous rants (http://roseneko.livejournal.com/207511.html) on the subject of said theater, that should give you an idea of how awesome it was - though in a very different and much quieter way than V, which is more of an in-your-face type of awesome. I need to do a post about it, actually...

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I've noticed a critical backlash against Beauty in recent years, declaring it one of the weaker Oscar winners -- and not only do I not get that, I understand that it's enough of a favorite that I can't quite be objective regarding it. In my case, too, it was pretty much a matter of timing in that I needed to see that movie at that moment.

...Good God, Juno's actually at our theater?!? I recall waiting months to get Schindler's List and Crouching Tiger. (In a related note, we also have a Veggie Tales movie and Alvin and the Chipmunks and the latest Uwe Boll movie in town. *shudder*) I have a...mixed track record with our theater, to say the least, though the DLP projection is very, very nice, I admit. Not $8.25 nice, though.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

$8.25? Bah! We pay $9.50 at the stinking theaters here in town, and don't even get me started on some of the sound and projection problems we've had. Not to mention supply issues. Argh.

While I haven't seen the critical backlash you're describing, I can see why it would happen - Beauty was very much a right-place-at-right-time sort of movie, a snapshot of what the middle-class American values of wealth-acquirement and beauty-preservation had brought us to in the wake of the dot-com boom. The characters weren't hugely developed, true, but that was in large part because they were stand-ins for the same story that was happening all over America - the midlife crisis, the realization that the values one's spent one's whole life chasing maybe aren't as awesome as one thought they would be, and the various reactions to that realization - denial (Carolyn), control (Col. Fitts), change (Lester), growth (Angela). Personally, I thought that was one of the film's biggest achievements - it managed to be a well-told story about one group of people that also worked on a far more universal level. More than one person I met told me they stopped watching it because it made them uncomfortable; while they didn't usually explain why, I got the distinct sense that they saw a bit too much of themselves in one or more of the characters.

Anyway, as a piece of art that so accurately reflected a certain slice of life at the time, it serves up all sorts of problems for people viewing it a decade later, or even those who weren't in that particular segment of middle-class America - it's lost its immediacy and stands more as a relic than a relevant piece. Kind of like Mrs. Dalloway, which was applauded upon publication for its heartrendingly accurate portrayal of the national state of mind of post-WWI-England, but which is known for causing headaches among modern college students who read it with no idea of the context involved. I think it's unfortunate that people are dismissing it, though, rather than looking at its context and seeing why it was so relevant...

*wonders if she's suddenly suffering from an attack of term paper-withdrawal*

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Where would you want to live, in an ideal situation?

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

I'm not certain I've been to enough places to really say for certain. I've heard a lot of good things about Hawaii from Brian, and assumedly "an ideal situation" would include, in that instance, "$750,000 to buy a house and enough annually to pay the taxes". But I can't say as I'd want to stay there forever - too isolated, I've got enough of that already here. I love Seattle, both for the political and technological climate, but I'm sure that'd get boring if I lived there all the time, too. Same with California...I think, ideally, I'd have homes in several places and the means to live in whichever one I pleased, depending on my mood and the time of year.

How's that for a cop-out answer? =D

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

I said 'ideal', not 'tidy'. (: