Marie Antoinette

Last weekend, Prairie and I went down to the Blacklight, and they were playing Marie Antoinette on the projection screen. Neither of us had seen it, and from the nearly universal panning it got when it came out, it wasn’t terribly high on our ‘to watch’ lists. However, the costumes really caught Prairie’s eye while she was watching it, and we figured it would be worth a rent to see the pretties.

As it turns out, we both really enjoyed the flick. The dialogue, which Prairie said looked fairly insipid when seen in bits and pieces as subtitles at the club, actually worked — it’s rather minimalist, and there’s a fair amount that is just presented as snatches of gossip heard in the background. The gloriously anachronistic soundtrack fit perfectly (for the most part, at least, there was one scene that neither of us liked the music choice for), and we ended up grabbing the soundtrack from iTunes. And, of course, it’s gorgeous to look at.

So don’t let the bad reviews steer you away from this one — for us, at least, it was worth the rent.


In other, unrelated news: this morning, we went out and doubled the size of my shoe collection, replacing my boots and adding a new pair of all-black Converse and some light shoes perfect for wandering out to the pool or walking along a beach.

And after a nice couple hours wandering around Magnuson Park, I know have something a bit more cheerful leading off my photo page. There’s more photos from the day to come, but I have to start paying attention to homework at some point….

The root of the problem…

In an aside to a post about an altercation on a Seattle Metro bus, David Schmader has this to say about the phrase, “I don’t know who I’m supposed to root for….”

It’s nothing really, but the grammatically preferable version of this phrase is “for whom I’m supposed to root,” which is the most hilarious collection of words I’ve encountered since “Academy Award-winning screenwriter Ben Affleck.”

It’s Academic, Really…

The sea squirt has a very simple brain which is used only to find a suitable spot to root itself for life. Once it’s settled into a spot, it no longer needs the brain, so it eats it. This has been compared by at least one Researcher to a professor receiving tenure at a university.

— from Weird Animals

(via LiveJournal Profile: eukaryaeukarya)

The Clothesline Project

The Clothesline Project is a program started on Cape Cod, MA, in 1990 to address the issue of violence against women. It is a vehicle for women affected by violence to express their emotions by decorating a shirt. They then hang the shirt on a clothesline to be viewed by others as testimony to the problem of violence against women.

There’s been a CLP display on the NSCC campus for the past few days. I stopped by yesterday after class and took a few photos. Every time I see this, I’m struck by the heartbreaking and uplifting power of the stories represented by these shirts. Incredible things to see.

I’ve also created a Flickr CLP Project group, as a tag search led me to quite a few other photos of CLP displays around the country.

The Clothesline Project. Get yours at bighugelabs.com/flickr

Entropy and Breakthrough

I’ve submitted two photos to JPG Magazine for possible inclusion in their next issue, one each for their themes of Entropy and Breakthrough. If you’re a JPG member, click through and toss a vote my way!

Okay…

Um…

Well, the fancy little Javascript boxes are fighting with the CSS in my WordPress theme. This post is just going to look goofy, at best.

That’s also why I’ve got a bunch of silly extra lines put in here to open space up.

Whee!

If you can’t even see the fancy little Javascript boxes (which might be the case on LiveJournal), try just clicking here and here