Die Suesseste

The most important thing that happened while this blog was on hiatus:


Our Heroine joyfully welcomed a fresh character into the panoply of people she loves: Die Suesseste.

Dear Die Suesseste,

One day when Our Heroine is old and gray (but hopefully still kicking around the place) you can read the archives of this blog and realize that auntie was just as eccentric as Mommy and Daddy told you she was. She loves you very very much and for always.

Love,
Godmother Auntie

My First Sci-Fi Debate: Nerds Have The Most Fun

Tuesday, August 18, 2009, was a historic day here at Our Heroine's Parasol Emporium & Petticoat Junction, for on that day I received my best comment to date. The comment was in response to my angry screed against District 9, in which I complained that the plot has more holes than a yard of Battenburg lace, and then I enumerated the ones that chafed the most. However, later that day a reader responded in disagreement: he felt that the content of those holes had been more than implied by the writer/director. Here's what he said [needless to say, but, SPOILER ALERT]:

...First off, the ship was described as "in distress", which could mean any number of electrical or mechanical problems could have existed, and, when MNU cut into the ship, the lights were off and it was in a very large amount of disrepair.

Just because the engines are operational, does not mean that the life support and computer systems are online...

[you asked:] "Why did the aliens come here? Why were they all sick upon arrival? Who (and where) are their leaders?"

Again, this is where life support systems come into play. For arguments sake, lets say the ship was damaged by a meteorite storm (highly likely due to the ship's large size) Some of the compartments may have been torn open into the void of space, killing a good deal of the aliens, specifically the leader caste. Christopher is likely the sole surviving member of the crew, and therefore plotted a course to the nearest liveable planet (Earth)

While they coast, the Prawns multiply causing their living conditions to deteriorate.

The reason they left their planet in the first place could be any number of things (civil war, colonization, exploration)

Although the aliens are unwelcome, we cannot help them repair their ship and leave, for the sole reason that they are the working caste, not the thinking caste. Its pointed out twice in the movie that these prawns aren't noted for their intelligence, and are very gullible when it comes to the humans telling them to do things. Also, MNU is holding them there for experimentation and weaponry purposes.

As far as weapons go, i cant disagree with you there, but I can offer speculations as to why they did not revolt;

Without leadership the revolution would be doomed anyway.

The strict curfews and deadly force imposed by MNU prevented the aliens from even attempting a revolt.

And finally, they've been there for 28 years. There must have been multiple revolts that were immediately crushed by military force.

The Prawn derailing of trains can be summed up by the media using anything they can to blow it out of proportion, like the 911 craze where everything was suspected terrorist activity.

I thoroughly enjoyed District 9 and think it's plot held together very well. Apart from a few "wtf?" moments (grav-gunning a pig... really?), I thought the plot was really concrete.

LOLZ! Our Heroine forgot about the pig that got grav-gunned. For that alone I would have loved this comment. But beyond that, I've never had a commenter go to such lengths to understand and respond to anything I've written, and I was really pleased, even though I can't agree with him (but wish I could).

Here's what I wrote in response:

I grant you that things COULD HAVE gone down the way you describe, but they could have gone down in other ways as well, and my problem with the movie is that it didn't give me enough information, (whether that was deliberate or not I don't know) and left to my own devices, I drew totally different conclusions about the Prawns than you did.

For example, for a ship that was allegedly in distress, (maybe damaged by meteors) w/o life support or computer systems, it took off without any issues! And it had to have systems and life support if Christopher was planning on navigating it to his home planet and surviving the trip! (Or at least that's what I assumed based on what I saw)

And if the Prawns left their planet because something bad had happened there, Chris was real confident about being able to find help once he got back. BUT, if they were coming to colonize Earth, that's an act of war (making District 9 a POW camp).

In regards to your point that the media blew Prawn destructiveness out of proportion, I saw no evidence for that, and in fact the "scientist" in the "documentary" explains that their destructiveness appeared to be cultural/biological. I agree that it's possible it was all a big media frenzy; but I wasn't shown enough for that conclusion, and, in fact, to me the movie's evidence pointed to the contrary.

You describe a coherent narrative for the Prawns, and if the movie had provided some audio/visual evidence for what you describe, I would definitely have felt differently about it. But what it seemed to me was that the writer/director could not come up with a narrative that explained the ship (first being in distress and then working fine), the arrival of the Prawns, how they all ended up in District 9, Chris's intelligence, and the Prawn arsenal coherently, so he just left it vague and blurry and called it "art."

My final point: your post did a better job than he did!

His comment really did do a better job than the movie, and I would have liked it so much more if I'd seen in it what he did. But more than that, this comment made Our Heroine the happiest nerd on Tuesday, so...thank you, Matt!

Our Heroine Admits There May Be Something In What Old Wordsworth Had To Say

When I was in college I studied the English Romantics for one whole semester. All these years later, I don't remember much except Samuel Taylor Coleridge was my all-around favorite, John Keats was tragic, Lord Byron was dreamy and I didn't much care for William Wordsworth.

To my mind at the time, Wordsworth's poems were narcissistic to the point of annoyance. He filtered everything through his imagination and then had to sing about it, and I was disgusted that he wrote an autobiographical poem, The Prelude, when (to me) poems ought to be many things, but your boring autobiography was not one of them. Forgive me, Wordsworth, I was only 18, and none too intelligent.

Anyhow, I hadn't really thought about him for years, until I saw this article in City Journal in which Andrew Klavan makes the case that Wordsworth was the first "hippie" who grew up.

As the century turned, the dream of French liberty finally died. The old tyranny gave way to a new one, as Burke had predicted. To Wordsworth’s disgust, Napoleon Bonaparte became emperor and “now, become oppressors in their turn, / Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defence / For one of conquest, losing sight of all / Which they had struggled for.”

It was, for Wordsworth, what the failure of Communism was for the radicals of a later day. He could no longer deny the error inherent in “speculative schemes— / That promised to abstract the hopes of Man.” He saw the Revolution as a dream that “flattered the young, pleased with extremes” and made “Reason’s naked self / The object of its fervour.” Confused by pure reason’s failure as a moral guide, he “lost / All feeling of conviction” and “yielded up moral questions in despair.” Slowly, he began to do the brave and difficult thing: to admit he had been wrong and change his mind.

This kind of article may or may not be your thing, but it really did fire in me a new respect for old Wordsworth, and I think I will brush off my Romantics anthology and read, if not The Prelude, than at least Lyrical Ballads again. Maybe you'll feel the same way, but if not, here's a short one in his honor: "The World Is Too Much With Us" (a favorite of mine even back then).

The World Is Too Much With Us

          THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
          Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
          Little we see in Nature that is ours;
          We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
          The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
          The winds that will be howling at all hours,
          And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
          For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
          It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
          A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;                         10
          So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
          Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
          Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
          Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

In Which Our Heroine Laughs and Laughs and Laughs and Laughs

Ladies and gentleman, I have much to do today and not much time to do it, but I had to take a moment to show you this, the reason the Internet was created:


A thousand LOLz, y'all!

Our Heroine, After Much Soul-Searching, Has Decided To Convert...

...from Dunkin Donuts to MacDonalds coffee. This decision will shock you all, enfuriate some, and delight others, but I must assure you, it was not a decision I made lightly, in fact, I have been considering this conversion for many months in my secret heart.

As I sit typing this, I am sipping on a steaming hot cup of McD's coffee, and I must confess it was this very thing - the consistent steaming hotness of their coffee - that first began to lure me away from the coffee of my youth, which is pretty spotty about temperature.

The other thing that played a role was the influence of my brother's father-in-law, a man I greatly respect in all things, but especially in matters of coffee (he brews an amazing cup), who told me several months ago that he had converted from DD to McD and had no regrets, except for the fact that McD's smells like grease and ground beef so he can't sit and read the paper there in the morning. But we agreed this was a minor theological point.

Finally, my travels within Spain played a role, as the people of this great country introduced me to cafe con leche, a drink which I promptly adored and began brewing at home, and which, over time, has gradually changed my palate to prefer a bolder coffee taste.

So that is it, good friends, I am a McDonaldsite now. I appreciate everyone who has stuck by me during this difficult time, and I will remember you all as I embark on this next, exciting phase of my coffee drinking life.

Updated: Wherein Our Heroine Learns To Her Amazement that She Has A "Look"

Last night, at Nordstrom's, one of the salesladies contributed to my never-ending struggle with ego by telling me I had a "great sense of style." She literally walked over to me and stopped me to tell me that. Then she added, "your look is both cute and comfortable." Ho! She made my life with that comment! Of course my Mum walked over and grabbed my arm and pulled me into the fitting room with her in order to save the nice saleslady from a 30 minute discourse in how I achieved "my look." (hee! I have a look!)

But now that my look has become legendary at Nordstrom's (it has not become legendary at Nordstrom's) I thought I would share with you all what I was wearing.

First - on my top half - a plain white tank from Old Navy, and over it, a delicate black ruffled cardigan from New York & Co. I can't find the cheap versions (the ones I was wearing), but here are the expensive versions from Banana Republic:

I had on a necklace too, silver, shorter, and with a little green jade shamrock charm on it. The model's necklace above is more striking than mine.

On my bottom half, I wore black flip-flips and a pair of embroidered cargo pants that are a little too big for me, so I had the waist cinched in a (mild) paper-bag effect. The embroidery and colors of the pants below are about right, but mine have a tie at the waist (uh, and my tummy wasn't showing):

Then, because the air was so humid and my hair was sticking out all over the place, I had on my head a khaki bucket hat, with all my hair hidden underneath it, like this one from the Gap:

So that was my "look." The funny thing is, I think the thing the saleslady liked was the girlie cardigan with the rugged cargoes -- but I only wore the cardigan because my orange sweatshirt was in the wash, and so I grabbed the cardigan off the back of my desk chair in case the Mall was air-conditioned. But I will never confess that to anyone, except to the three of you who read this blog.

Updated: My baby brother comes to town today in advance of my cousin J's wedding! I can't wait to see him, though I hope he isn't intimidated by my "look."

Our Heroine Advises You to Return That Talisman, Post Haste

Uh, oh. I've got a bad feeling...about this movie.

Last night I forced Mum, with whom I am visiting, to watch Exorcist: The Beginning with me on AMC. It's a prequel to The Exorcist, and it tells the story of Father Merrin immediately after WWII. He's lost his faith, he's defrocked himself, and he's working as an archeologist in Africa. And, as we all know, every archeologist will eventually uncover a mysterious talisman that unleashes the devil. It's just science.

So it's a gore-fest, and not very good, and my Mum was half-reading a novel on the sofa, but she looked up for one particularly excruciating bit and asked, "Why. are you. watching. this?" And I replied, without thinking about it, "I just like movies where priests are heroes. Especially when they kick Satan's @$."

To which Mum said, "You should watch more old movies, then."

The problem is I don't know of any old movies that have positive priest characters beyond The Exorcist. How to even find them? Well now I don't have to, because in answer to a prayer I did not even know I made, today I discovered this list especially created to celebrate the Year of the Priest:

...the Year of the Priest kicks in on June 19 and to help celebrate it the National Catholic Register has offered up some suggestions for movies to watch which contain positive portrayals of our collared clerics. Here’s the top ten good priest movies according to NCR:

1. The Scarlet and the Black (1983)
2. The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
3. The Mission (1986), mature audiences
4. Going My Way (1944)
5. The Keys of the Kingdom (1944)
6. On the Waterfront (1954)
7. I Confess (1953)
8. Boys Town (1938)
9. Molokai: The Story of Father Damien (1999), mature audiences
10. The Exorcist (1973) mature audiences

I haven't seen any of these except The Exorcist, and the last 15 minutes of The Mission. I can't wait to bulk up my Netflix queue with all the rest.

In other movie news, shortly the mail should come with the hotly anticipated Cache. I hope I can make Der Weiss watch it with me. I'm a little afraid.

Also: Thank you, B-Movie Catechism for posting this wonderful list. EegahInc, who runs the blog, has added his own addendums to the list, but Our Heroine refrains from such drivel. We are entirely highbrow here. ;-)

Dispatches from Facebook: We're Team Kate, Apparently

What follows are wall postings by my family regarding the Gosselin debacle. I've never seen an episode, so all I know is what I've seen via supermarket tabloid headlines. I didn't realize Our Favorite Cousin and Little Brother both watched and had strong opinions. I was schooled this morning on FB. (warning, coarse language ahead)

Our Favorite Cousin thinks Jon Gosselin is the biggest douchebag.

Our Heroine at 9:52pm June 22
i thought it was the lady gosselin who was mean? i don't really know, i don't watch the show. wassup?

Our Favorite Cousin at 8:08am June 23
No, the lady Gosselin was just trying to take care of her 8 kids and husband! Sorry if she got a little bitchy here and there... OHHH... this is just terrible..

Our Heroine at 9:46am June 23
the man gosselin DOES seem a little immature.

Our Favorite Cousin at 9:53am June 23:
A little!! He has both ears pierced. Come on guy. Get a grip on yourself.

Little Brother at 10:49am June 23:
The only winner in this mess is Jason Mesnick. If you thought his douchebaggery would be hard to top, Jon Gosselin proved you wrong. I look forward to the cover of People in 10 years for the "Where is Jon Gosselin now?" story. My bet is 100 pounds heavier, fully bald and broke living under a bridge.

After writing that last post, Little Brother returned to his Tacitus in the original Latin.