robstoppable

Screw it. It's Portland.

Just so I can have a target in mind and not think about it for a while. Even though I reserve my right to (and probably will) change my mind (several times). I don't do well with great big uncertainties hanging over my plans when it's in my power to actually concretize them.

It's the smart choice, and while I'm at school, smart is definitely a good thing. I'll go visit this summer just to make sure.

Yes, I appreciate it's silly to worry about where I'm going to wind up in a year and a half when I still haven't even figured out my plans for my trip to Argentina (next month, maybe), or settled on what shows I'm going to go see when I'm in New York (in two weeks).

My mind is odd, but it's mine, and I'm mostly resigned to my neuroses, thanks.

With that out of the way, I can get mental traction on everything else.

Well, here's hoping, anyway.

Happy New Year.

Hope it's wonderful for everyone.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, here's my list of what I read, watched, and heard during the second half of 2009.

( Read )

( Watched )

( Heard )

Bother. I got behind on my reading, and just never caught up. And I didn't go to the movies as much as I wanted, either.

But hey, I still enjoyed myself.

I went to go see Avatar.

I knew what it was going to be going in, so I can't plead ignorance.

I don't really have much to add to the critique that others have already made.

However, I would just like to point out that these people wouldn't need a honky if the damn honkies would just stay the fuck out of other people's homes.

Just saying.

Also? Really? Must it always be about the damn honky who saves and becomes one of the natives and out-natives the natives? Seriously?

Argh.

Still, it's great to see an allegory where the people who are standing-in for my ancestors who were destroyed get to win. It's just deeply annoying that stand-ins for my other ancestors (you know, the rapists and pillagers and destroyers) not only do not seem to really get a clue on a societal scale, but the very few who do go native are the ones who save the day.

And yes, I know that whenever two peoples meet, it's usually the ones with the less advanced tech that lose.

That may be how things are; that doesn't make it right.

So if that's to change, it must be that peoples themselves change, so that the strong do not exploit the weak.

We could start by making better stories.

I guess that's our job.

Well... all right, then.


(That said, it was pretty. And I did thoroughly enjoy the parts that didn't make me want to kick the next hapless white person I saw. And it was very nice to have two Latinas in major roles. And I'll probably buy it on Blu-Ray, because did I mention it was pretty? But criminy, I'm still all *snarl* about it. It would have been so easy to fix the story, too. And it would have been better, too. Argh.)

All pictures link to ACP. Except for Sanji, because I haven't added him anywhere yet.

My grandfather, whom I've only ever known to be a solid rock, is having a hard time with my grandmother's death. Apparently they were married for seventy-one years. Seventy-one YEARS. Jeez, I'd feel lucky just to be alive for seventy-one years. And aside from a several week business trip right after their wedding, they'd never spent a single night apart.