lizard men of xenor
So we saw the Harry Potter movie last night. Escapism, woo. It had the usual problems of film adaptations and didn't break any new ground—but still, plenty of nice moments and completely watchable at 2.5 hours, which is a credit. The child actors were all superb, my favorite being Emma Watson as Hermione. Everything she did made me laugh; I couldn't help it.
Lord of The Rings trailer: excellent. (Justin says: "With the Fellowship of the Ring, you get $20,000 and can move wherever you want.") Attack of the Clones trailer: ack. They actually had dialogue in this one and, as Vu pointed out, it looks like a Dawson's Creek episode.
Now then: The Blind Assassin. There's some deft and sneaky structure in here that I don't want to talk about because a) it ruins the surprise, and b) we've all developed this surgeon's attitude toward books where we compulsively take them apart to see what makes them tick. It's necessary in this line of work, of course, but I do miss the simplicity of reading without constantly asking: How did they do this? How can I do it? So in lieu of analysis, I've picked three favorite paragraphs.
Probably God was in the broom closet. It seemed the most likely place. He was lurking in there like some eccentric and possibly dangerous uncle, but she couldn't be certain whether he was there at any given moment because she was afraid to open the door. "God is in your heart," said the Sunday-school teacher, and that was even worse. If in the broom closet, something might have been possible, such as locking the door.
Dear Ms. X, I acknowledge your letter concerning your proposed thesis, though I can't say its title makes a great deal of sense to me. Doubtless it does to you or you would not have come up with it. I cannot give you any help. Also you do not deserve any. "Deconstruction" implies the wrecking ball, and "problematize" is not a verb.
The sacred river is alive. It flows to the lifeless ocean, because that's where all things that are alive end up. The lover is a demon-lover because he isn't there. The sunny pleasure-dome has caves of ice because that's what pleasure-domes have—after a while they become very cold, and after that they melt, and then where are you? All wet. Mount Abora was the Abyssinian maid's home, and she was singing about it because she couldn't get back to it. The ancestral voices were prophesying war because ancestral voices never shut up, and they hate to be wrong, and war is a sure thing, sooner or later.
