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I need a list of my lists! Argh!
Jan. 2nd, 2008 01:31 pmMaybe it's just the new-year potential energy starting to unwind but I suddenly find myself with lists of people I must call, things I must do before the year is TOO much older, sort out this, figure out that, chase up the other... argh. The year is two days old and already I need more hours in a day than there seem to be available...
We had a quiet New Year's Eve at home with my friend and webmaster, Jerry, who comes up every year to spend the evening with us - it's kind of tradition, by now. And this new year is starting out, thanks to Jerry, on a much better footing than the years that came before - automatic daily backups, I haz them. Jerry set those up. I feel a little better now, seeing as I haven't actually backed up the computer at LEAST since I did the third "Worldweavers" novel - in theory, there is an extra copy of it with my publisher in New York, but I feel much better knowing that the beastie is being backed up on a daily basis now.
We went to a movie on New Year's day, the three of us, and saw "The Golden Compass" (hence the icon...). With the caveat that I haven't actually read the books and have no idea what they did or did not do to the actual written word in order to make the movie, I have to say that my reaction was pretty much, "Meh." Visually sumptuous, with some really great moments... but there were long periods of "there's no *there* there" in between the moments. The daemons are great, of course, but the talking animal aspect of it, as well as the age of the protagonists, does give it a feel of a "kid movie", which the philosophy behind it kind of completely negates. I am perfectly certain that the whole question of "dust" and all that it signifies was much more deeply explored in the books than it is in the movie, but seriously - the charge levelled at these movies, that they were made to lure kids into atheism - even without it being ludicrous to begin with, I don't think they need have any fear. The kids of an age to be impressionable enough to be so lured would be bored senseless by the philosophical underpinnings of the story, and would probably yell for more bears. And I seriously hope it isn't Philip Pullman's writing that's this inept, but there's a speech by the 'Gyptian King to the effect of, if the bad guys have HARMED those children, we will destroy them... (leaving completely out of it the obvious facts that (a) yes, they WERE bad guys and (b) they WERE abducting children, and if those two were true then they weren't doing this to take the kids to a summer picnic somewhere, which meant that the intent to harm had been there all along, which reduced a speech which was supposed to have been a shiverful declaration of power to mere empty posturing...) Anyway. Visually sumptuous. A pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. We'll leave it there.
Back to my lists now.
Once again - and for the last time this time around - happy new year, everybody.
We had a quiet New Year's Eve at home with my friend and webmaster, Jerry, who comes up every year to spend the evening with us - it's kind of tradition, by now. And this new year is starting out, thanks to Jerry, on a much better footing than the years that came before - automatic daily backups, I haz them. Jerry set those up. I feel a little better now, seeing as I haven't actually backed up the computer at LEAST since I did the third "Worldweavers" novel - in theory, there is an extra copy of it with my publisher in New York, but I feel much better knowing that the beastie is being backed up on a daily basis now.
We went to a movie on New Year's day, the three of us, and saw "The Golden Compass" (hence the icon...). With the caveat that I haven't actually read the books and have no idea what they did or did not do to the actual written word in order to make the movie, I have to say that my reaction was pretty much, "Meh." Visually sumptuous, with some really great moments... but there were long periods of "there's no *there* there" in between the moments. The daemons are great, of course, but the talking animal aspect of it, as well as the age of the protagonists, does give it a feel of a "kid movie", which the philosophy behind it kind of completely negates. I am perfectly certain that the whole question of "dust" and all that it signifies was much more deeply explored in the books than it is in the movie, but seriously - the charge levelled at these movies, that they were made to lure kids into atheism - even without it being ludicrous to begin with, I don't think they need have any fear. The kids of an age to be impressionable enough to be so lured would be bored senseless by the philosophical underpinnings of the story, and would probably yell for more bears. And I seriously hope it isn't Philip Pullman's writing that's this inept, but there's a speech by the 'Gyptian King to the effect of, if the bad guys have HARMED those children, we will destroy them... (leaving completely out of it the obvious facts that (a) yes, they WERE bad guys and (b) they WERE abducting children, and if those two were true then they weren't doing this to take the kids to a summer picnic somewhere, which meant that the intent to harm had been there all along, which reduced a speech which was supposed to have been a shiverful declaration of power to mere empty posturing...) Anyway. Visually sumptuous. A pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. We'll leave it there.
Back to my lists now.
Once again - and for the last time this time around - happy new year, everybody.