The perfect summer day

Today is astoundingly gorgeous. It’s the perfect temperature, full sun, the perfect amount of breeze coming in the window, and the air smells like plants, not city.

It’s a day meant for eating tomatoes.

Not bad at all.

I wrote 3259 words of the Increasingly Complicated Fantasy Novel today for Write Your @ss off Day.

Of course, I signed up for Friday and completely forgot about it, but hey, it got done within the time allotted.

I am not devious enough to be writing this plot. I need a writing partner who’s completely evil.

A 1001 Word Rebuttal (including the title)

Recently, a (white, male, Australian) friend of mine read Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Lions of Al-Rassan on my recommendation. He gave the book back, unfinished, with two criticisms:

1. All the women are beautiful, unless they’re peasants.

2. The sex scenes are ridiculous. They come out of nowhere; there’s no motivation!

Now, this is one of my favourite fantasy novels. I’ve read it several times, but not recently, so I’m re-reading it now and I think I’ve figured out why I didn’t see what he saw.

It’s because he’s missing something fundamental and profound about the lives of these women. These two criticisms are actually one.

(Major spoilers after the jump)

The Only Potato Salad I’ll Eat

I’ll always try others, but I never like them.

I made this for a post-Christmas get-together (I wish I had taken a picture; it’s so pretty, all fluffy and white, speckled with green.) and discovered a few things:

• Australian sour cream is not like North American sour cream — it’s less sour and more cream.
• Heinz salad cream is an acceptable substitute for Miracle Whip.
• My mother is incapable of writing a recipe for someone who doesn’t already know how to make it.

Signs of the Apocalypse, Part Two

In the past two days I have, after years of playing,

1) won a game of Carcassonne

2) won a game of Illuminati*

3) won a game of Civ 3: Conquests

* Well, would have won if we’d finished the game. I was sure to get that last alignment in the next hand.

Signs of the apocalypse?

A few weeks ago I made a perfect, fluffy, golden omelette that stayed in one piece as I plated it.

Last week I managed to fold a fitted sheet neatly.

Just now I poured the first cup of tea out of a pot without spilling a single drop — not even a drip off the end of the spout afterwards.

Apocalypse or coincidence?

I Love You, Man: Actually a Good Movie

Now that my jet lag is mostly gone, I can write coherently about the entertainment choices on my fifteen-hour flight from Vancouver to Sydney — what little choice there was.

Having watched Coraline (marvellous!) on the flight over and having exhausted all the non-annoying television options, as well as too bleary-eyed to read with only two hours left on the flight, I turned to cheesy Hollywood comedy.

My choices were 17 Again (and how weird is it to have someone my age being the old one in a film like this?), He’s Just Not That Into You (not touching that), and I Love You, Man.

At least I Love You, Man has Paul Rudd and Rashida Jones.

Oddly enough, it turned out to be a smart, thoughtful movie. Yeah, I know. I wonder how it ever got funded, too.

Peter is a guy whose friends have always been women, even as a child, and he doesn’t really think about it until he realizes he has no male friends to stand up with him at his wedding.

No one ever suggests one of his female friends, but he doesn’t seem to have many of them, either. He has a fiancee and a lot of acquaintances, but no real friends. This is a guy who just doesn’t connect with many people, and he realizes he’s missing out on something that most other people have.

So he goes hunting for a guy friend. You’d think this would be the point where it would all go horribly wrong, but it doesn’t. His fiancée, Zooey, thinks it’s a great idea and is wholly supportive of him, even when one of his dates kisses him goodnight.

Did I mention the astounding absence of homophobia in this film? I can think of one instance involving a very minor character we’re meant to dislike.

In fact, Zooey supports him every way she can. The inciting incident, when Peter notices he has no guy friends, happens when he overhears Zooey and her friends talking about him. The friends gently (lovingly, I’d say) mock him for it and Zooey defends him. I think it’s important to distinguish that she defends him, not herself or her choice of him; nothing her friends do or say in this film make her doubt her choice. The only thing that does that is Peter himself later on.

The characters, with the exception of a few broadly-drawn stereotypes, are all rational, likeable adults who make thoughtful decisions, recognize their mistakes, and seek to change themselves for the better. The (deliberate, I’m sure) stereotypes, on the other hand, serve to emphasize how complex and real the other characters are. The main characters are people, not archetypes. They all have faults, they’re all a little selfish and self-centred, but in the way your own friends are, not in the way most movie characters are. They love and respect and support each other even when they act like asses.

The comedy comes from the characters’ wit and the reversal of genre tropes, not from humiliation and stupidity. It’s refreshing and well worth watching at least once.

Anathem

I’m vaguely pleased with myself that I finished Anathem. It’s not that it’s a bad book (it’s a great book) or that it’s too long (I’m sure I’ve read longer) or that it’s dull (I missed two meals while reading the climax) but that the narrator’s voice is so soothing that I kept falling asleep after a few pages.

Have I mentioned my addiction?

Tea, in pretty much any form. I put it in miso soup the other day.

Anyway, I’m Magpie_Lark over on http://www.steepster.com

Culture Blogging, February – April

I’ve been writing a lot and reading very little except free stories on the internet. It’s almost sad.

Read

Magic for Beginners, by Kelly Link
The Tough Guide to Fantasy Land, by Diana Wynne Jones

Watched

Don’t Look Now
Little Miss Sunshine
The Golden Compass
Tron
Sunshine
When Worlds Collide – A movie about people failing to adequately plan for a disaster they have ample warning about. I wanted to throw things at them all.
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
Impromptu
Forbidden Planet