ZeeGeezer

Il faut cultiver son jardin

I've been neglecting my little garden too. And without daily care and attention neither will thrive. So my thyme has died and I haven't planted any basil or parsley. But last year's geranium is flowering nicely.

And I still have a job. For the time being anyway. More money too since I'm going to be working full-time from July 1. And I rode my bike every inch of the way from San Fancisco to Los Angeles. 667 miles.

And I've managed to pay my bills. Sistopher still owes me $21,000 though.

And our concerts on the weekend were terrific. Plus I had a sleepover on Saturday night.

Can anyone think of a reason why I shouldn't buy this? I need a new computer desperately.

Quandary

I'm just a girl who can't say no.
I'm in a terrible fix.
I always say, "Come on, let's go,"
Just when I oughta say nix.

Just Awful

I never really liked Will & Grace all that much. It peddled the most annoying stereotypes of gay men. But, out of solidarity with the 'mos, I decided to watch the series finale tonight. And it was TERRIBLE. Tired, tired writing. Not in the least amusing. It borrowed from the series finale of Six Feet Under, but with no panache or charm. Now I remember why I hardly ever watch commercial tv.

Always look on the birght side of life

Yesterday the not-for-profit membership organization for which I work announced that it will "merge" with its long-time and much more successful rival. Merge in the sense that all employees of my organization will be laid off and the other will choose the few, the very few, that it wishes to offer employment to.

So, unless a miracle occurs, I expect to be unemployed on 1 July. With 4 weeks holiday pay and 3 weeks severance. Meanwhile Sistopher owes me $20,000 and I can't pay my Amex bill.

"Would you like fries with that?"

Two-thirds literate.

Jason Kottke  notices this list by movie critic Jim Emerson of 102 movies movies'"you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They're the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat "movie-literate."'

It seems I've seen 67 of them (assuming I can count right).  Not bad.  Especially for someone who doesn't like horror movies or violent movies.  Ones I've seen (or remember having seen) in bold.  Guess I'll have to add the rest to my Netflix queue.

8 1/2
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Alien
All About Eve
Annie Hall
Apocalypse Now
Bambi
The Battleship Potemkin
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Big Red One
The Bicycle Thief
The Big Sleep
Blade Runner
Blowup
Blue Velvet
Bonnie and Clyde
Breathless
Bringing Up Baby
Carrie
Casablanca
Un Chien Andalou
Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis
Chinatown
Citizen Kane
A Clockwork Orange
The Crying Game
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Days of Heaven
Dirty Harry
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Do the Right Thing
La Dolce Vita
Double Indemnity
Dr. Strangelove
Duck Soup
E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial
Easy Rider
The Empire Strikes Back
The Exorcist
Fargo
Fight Club
Frankenstein
The General
The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II
Gone With the Wind
GoodFellas
The Graduate
Halloween
A Hard Day's Night
Intolerance
It's a Gift
It's a Wonderful Life
Jaws
The Lady Eve
Lawrence of Arabia
M
Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior
The Maltese Falcon
The Manchurian Candidate
Metropolis
Modern Times
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Nashville
The Night of the Hunter
Night of the Living Dead
North by Northwest
Nosferatu
On the Waterfront
Once Upon a Time in the West
Out of the Past
Persona
Pink Flamingos
Psycho
Pulp Fiction
Rashomon
Rear Window
Rebel Without a Cause
Red River
Repulsion
The Rules of the Game
Scarface
The Scarlet Empress
Schindler's List
The Searchers
The Seven Samurai
Singin' in the Rain
Some Like It Hot
A Star Is Born
A Streetcar Named Desire
Sunset Boulevard
Taxi Driver
The Third Man
Tokyo Story
Touch of Evil
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Trouble in Paradise
Vertigo
West Side Story
The Wild Bunch
The Wizard of Oz

Loved the book? Now try the movie

The Guardian (my favorite newspaper of all!) yesterday posted a list of the top 50 film adaptations of books. I'm rather surprised at how many I've both seen and read.

(B = read the Book; M= seen the movie)

1. [B/M] 1984
2. [B/M] Alice in Wonderland
3. [M] American Psycho
4. [B/M] Breakfast at Tiffany's
5. Brighton Rock
6. [B/M] Catch 22
7. [B/M] Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
8. [B/M] A Clockwork Orange
9. [B/M] Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
10. [B/M] The Day of the Triffids
11. Devil in a Blue Dress
12. [M] Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
13. [M] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
14. [M] Doctor Zhivago
15. [M] Empire of the Sun
16. [B/M] The English Patient
17. [M] Fight Club
18. [B/M]The French Lieutenant's Woman
19. [M] Get Shorty
20. [M] The Godfather
21. [B/M] Goldfinger
22. Goodfellas
23. [B/M] Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)
24. [B/M] The Hound of the Baskervilles
25. [M] Jaws
26. [B/M]The Jungle Book
27. [M] A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
28. [M] LA Confidential
29. [M] Les Liaisons Dangereuses
30. [B/M] Lolita
31. [B/M] Lord of the Flies
32. [M] The Maltese Falcon
33. [B/M] Oliver Twist
34. [B/M] One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
35. Orlando
36. [M] The Outsiders
37. [B/M] Pride and Prejudice
38. [M] The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
39. [M] The Railway Children
40. [B/M] Rebecca
41. [B/M] The Remains of the Day
42. Schindler's Ark (aka Schindler's List)
43. Sin City
44. [B/M] The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
45. [B/M] The Talented Mr Ripley
46. [M] Tess of the D'Urbervilles
47. Through a Glass Darkly
48. [M]To Kill a Mockingbird
49. [M] Trainspotting
50. The Vanishing
51. Watership Down

Am I embarrassed that I have neither read nor seen Watership Down? I lived through endless repeats of "Bright Eyes" on the radio. I think that is more than sufficient.

Guardian readers will get to vote for their top choice from this list. I think The Remains of the Day would have to get my vote for being the best adapation of the best novel. Although it is a difficult decision.

via Kottke

The pie plant that grows in the spring

There is this weird peculiarity in American cook-speak, in the culinary lexicon. For some reason that I can't fathom, meat is "roast", but vegetables are "roasted". Roast beef with roasted potatoes. Odd.

For Easter fertility-god-rebirth dinner I bought [bought, Ack!] rhubarb. Made a quite delicious rhubarb crisp with old-fashioned English custard sauce. Preceded with pan-roast chicken breast, potatoes au gratin and wonderful baby green beans.

And it suddenly occurs to me that rhubarb is nicely representative of the rebirth of the resurrection god. Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Baldur, Jesus, etc. It dies away every winter (in a quite nasty, rotting way, too) and without fail returns every spring, sending up it's phallic red stems to welcome the return of warmth and life to the soil.

And I suppose that's one of the reasons I am so uncomfortable with the thought of buying rhubarb. It just seems wrong.

But it was on special.

So is Gravity a Mosaic Law?

Speaking of God, this dialogue between God and Moses is brilliiant.

Thanks, Andy.

Way to Make Me Feel Ignorant

So Library Thing has published its list of the "50 top-rated authors". Aack! There's only one there that I've even heard of. A cookbook writer.

Oh and God is in there. Another one I've heard of. Yes, that God. The one who wrote the Bible. Also known, apparently, as "The Lord God Almighty". Would that be a double-barrelled surname? But it would seem that God didn't write the Book of Mormon or the Koran. Nobody wrote those. Well, some people think Anonymous wrote the Koran.

Unfortunately for God, he she umm comes in at no. 40 of the top 50. No Booker Prize in store for him her umm I guess. Mind you, it could be worse. God could be in the "50 lowest-rated authors", along with Immanuel Kant.

Neologisms I hate, part 1

• "penned" for "written" or "wrote", as in "Douglas Coupland (of Generation X fame) pens an engaging Guardian non-interview with Morrissey". This is especially galling when Mr. Coupland himself almost certainly wouldn't dream of saying he had "penned" anything. This sample from Andy Towle, who normally, um, pens better than this. What's intriguing is that this particular synecdoche seems to have started only after everyone stopped actually writing anything longer than a telephone number on a trick's hand with a pen.
• "inked" for "signed". Sports pages seem to be full of this. Well, I can't attest for the sports pages themselves since I haven't looked at a sports page in about 20 years, but certainly the sports headlines I see in Google News are full of inkings.

Almost certainly both these horrors came from sports penners in the first place. Or should that be penists?