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Entry tags:
Gratuitous electronics, gratuitous Rickman review, and gratuitous nudity
I've found a new toy to buy, as I always do.
I've taken to bringing my portable DVD player into the hospital with me. It's nice for the nights I have to stay in Recovery to keep an eye on an animal to just set it up in the corner and watch a movie while simultaneously fulfilling my duties. What I would like even better would be a way to read Snarry, but try as I might the player won't recognize text files, only video and music. It would be a stone drag to print out all my favorites, never mind new ones that I don't necessarily want to keep forever and ever.
There must be a device designed to display electronic text files, I thought. Sure, I've got my laptop, but that's too bulky to carry into the hospital. Something portable but with data storage capacity and preferably a way to interface with my desktop. Hang on, I thought. What's the deal with these PDA thingies that everyone seems to have nowadays?
And there, of course, is the answer. Got it in one (actually two. The first thing I found was a Sony Portable Reader that was very handsome indeed, but cost $350). I was off and running to Amazon to do some research.
I encountered the same problem I did while looking for a camcorder. Most people wanted PDAs only for a glorified address book, and in that capacity raved about this one and that one. Others wanted them for an mp3 player and complained about the limited memory and crappy speakers of this one or that one. Very, very few seemed interested in the e-Book capabilities. I finally narrowed it down to two older units, a Casio Cassiopeia and a Hewlett-Packard Jornada.
Then it was off to eBay, where I always find better deals and more selection than at Amazon. There I found PDA accessories by the thousands, but actual PDAs were much harder to come by. Out of roughly 1500 search results, only about 12 were for PDAs and every one already had a feeding frenzy of 10 or more bids on them. I'm not down with that -- I don't have a single competitive bone in my body and would much rather use Buy It Now and decide on a purchase in a leisurely, unpressured fashion.
I finally settled on one listing, a used Jornada that had an opening bid of $20 and a Buy It Now price of $45. No one else was paying it any attention, probably because it was a simple, bare bones auction by a private seller. I prefer these, however. In my experience Power Sellers don't bother answering questions or responding if you have a problem once the auction ends. The listing was a little TOO bare bones though, and I emailed the seller with some questions about what exactly was included and the condition of the item.
I waited about an hour for a response but it never came. I've admitted to myself and Tery that by far my biggest flaw and what is usually my biggest undoing is my towering, thundering impatience. It's just awful and I have virtually no control over it. So after that hour I opted instead for a unit selling for twice as much from a Power Seller, except it came with an extra memory card and collapsible qwerty keyboard as well.
The next morning I heard back from the first seller. He answered both questions positively and I was kicking myself big time for jumping the gun. I checked on his auction and there were only two hours remaining, with still no activity on it. I went back to work but couldn't shake the thought of that PDA there for the taking for a mere $20. What a freaking amazing deal that would be. Yes, it was identical to the unit I had already won, but I also felt fairly certain I'd easily be able to resell whichever one wasn't as nice.
You guessed it. I went for it. I placed a bid for $25, and a damn good thing too because mudbugz1 tried to snipe me in the last three seconds with the same bid. Haha!! I don't have a competitive bone in my body, but that's the second-best way to win an auction.
With two PDAs on their way, I immediately started looking for downloadable e-Books. Yes, I'm all about the Snarry, but it would be nice to catch up on other reading as well. The PDA represents the marriage of my two favorite things in the world, reading and technology. What I'm very keen to read is Running with Scissors for starters. It was while searching for this that I slowly came to the realization that the only books available for free online are those published before 1923. So basically the Bible and the complete works of Jane Austen, and loads and loads of other titles that have been translated into Cliffs Notes. Bah.
Fine. I wasn't averse to paying a small fee for newer releases. But the only site I could find to buy it wanted $17.95 for the file. For that much I could just buy the actual book. So I outsmarted them all. I took a chance with my file sharing program, Frostwire (nee Limewire) and found some titles available. Not Running with Scissors unfortunately, but I got The God Delusion, recommended by my friend Jeffy, Cell by Stephen King, The Thief of Always by Clive Barker (read it once, loved it, barely remember it) and even the V for Vendetta graphic novel. How fucking awesome is THAT?? I searched for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which I've started to reread in preparation for The Deathly Hallows, got a ton of hits, only to discover that most of them were bogus. When I say bogus I mean someone is circulating an e-Book with that title, which begins with Harry and Dudley engaged in a soda-drinking contest to see which of them has to pee first. "Hang on a minute," I thought. "I know my memory is crap but that really doesn't sound right." I guess that's ONE way to get your writing out there. (Never fear. I eventually found the correct version.)
(My quandary of the second PDA has been solved tonight. Tery, who scoffed and rolled her eyes as hard as she ever has when I first told her about it, has since decided that it might be very handy indeed for her manager work. Yep, they all laugh at first, but eventually come around.)
~*~
I like to watch more obscure movies because every so often I stumble upon a diamond in the rough, a movie that appeals to me for unknown reasons that almost no one else has heard of. Impromptu is such a movie, starring a younger, more adorable Hugh Grant as the effeminate Chopin, aggressively pursued by a very butch Judy Davis as George Sand. Another movie in this category is Carrington -- true, I only watched it the first time because I was and always will be madly in love with Jonathan Pryce, but I've grown to love the story for itself beyond what Jonathan brings to it.
So to that end I've rented another Rickman movie. I watched it with MyFriendDeb, who shares my fascination with him to a lesser degree. The film is Mesmer :
Alan plays Franz Mesmer, a doctor from the 1800's who I guess pioneered hypnotherapy (and from whose name we get the word "mesmerize" evidently). He caused great controversy with his techniques and there was a raging debate about whether he was a charlatan. He worked with mostly lunatics and epileptics, when the preferred treatment of the day was bleeding them until they were too weak and anemic to thrash about anymore. His cures involved muttering about humans being out of balance with the cosmos and then running his hands repeatedly down the patient's body. From where Deb and I were sitting, it just looked like a flimsy pretense to rub lots of women's breasts, but it was all good.
The real problems start when he falls for a pretty blind girl, who stays with him at his house for extended treatment, which doesn't please his harpy of a wife one jot. Oh yes, and there's another pretty girl, not blind but who looks unfortunately very similar to his patient, who is living in his attic and is also quite possessive of him. She may be the wife's cousin? Niece? If there's an explanation of her or what she's doing in the attic, Deb and I both missed it.
Despite his laborious, time-consuming work one-on-one with the girl that makes very little progress, he expands his repertoire to include an entire courtyard full of loonies, a passionate and tumultuous scene that nevertheless ends in spectacular failure. It also involves Alan running, and I said to Deb I've never seen a movie with him where he DIDN'T run which was strange given that he runs so girlishly. We both agreed that we didn't hold it against him one bit.
He returns to working with Blind Girl until one afternoon Attic Girl walks in on their intimate touching session, flies at Blind Girl in a jealous rage and knocks her to the floor, hitting her head in the process. Lo! Her sight is restored. Weeks and months of being fondled by Alan and all she needed was a sharp blow to the back of the head (though who wouldn't prefer the first method?) She and Alan run through the courtyard, celebrating her miraculous cure, and share one illicit (and fairly hot) kiss. Which is of course observed by the wife and Alan is kicked instantly and literally to the curb.
Rather than hook up with Blind Girl as you'd expect, he flees to Paris where his demonstrations become more of a parlor trick for very bored rich women. No more hands-on work, but lots of orgasmic moaning and heaving corseted chests in response to his silky voice (perfectly understandable). Eventually he again sits before a panel of his peers who denounce him outright as a phony. As proof, they bring in the Blind Girl, who is again blind (wait, what?) in a scene that is a frame-for-frame replay of the beginning of the movie, very confusing. Nothing is answered, however, because at that moment the French Revolution begins and all the erudite, upper crust snobs are forced to run for their lives, leaving Mesmer and Blind Girl alone. And if I remember correctly, the movie might end there, extremely abruptly and unsatisfyingly.
No, this movie is NOT the diamond in the rough I was hoping for. Whether the fault of the editing or the script or whatever, it was just next to impossible to follow, even had I NOT been bleary and groggy from working the night before. However, I was grateful that Deb didn't mind watching it because we both agree that sitting through 1 hour and 46 minutes of a bad Alan Rickman movie is still better than sitting through 90 minutes of a good Matthew McConaughey movie. 2 out of 5.
~*~
Finally I leave you with some gratuitous full frontal nudity.
I've taken to bringing my portable DVD player into the hospital with me. It's nice for the nights I have to stay in Recovery to keep an eye on an animal to just set it up in the corner and watch a movie while simultaneously fulfilling my duties. What I would like even better would be a way to read Snarry, but try as I might the player won't recognize text files, only video and music. It would be a stone drag to print out all my favorites, never mind new ones that I don't necessarily want to keep forever and ever.
There must be a device designed to display electronic text files, I thought. Sure, I've got my laptop, but that's too bulky to carry into the hospital. Something portable but with data storage capacity and preferably a way to interface with my desktop. Hang on, I thought. What's the deal with these PDA thingies that everyone seems to have nowadays?
And there, of course, is the answer. Got it in one (actually two. The first thing I found was a Sony Portable Reader that was very handsome indeed, but cost $350). I was off and running to Amazon to do some research.
I encountered the same problem I did while looking for a camcorder. Most people wanted PDAs only for a glorified address book, and in that capacity raved about this one and that one. Others wanted them for an mp3 player and complained about the limited memory and crappy speakers of this one or that one. Very, very few seemed interested in the e-Book capabilities. I finally narrowed it down to two older units, a Casio Cassiopeia and a Hewlett-Packard Jornada.
Then it was off to eBay, where I always find better deals and more selection than at Amazon. There I found PDA accessories by the thousands, but actual PDAs were much harder to come by. Out of roughly 1500 search results, only about 12 were for PDAs and every one already had a feeding frenzy of 10 or more bids on them. I'm not down with that -- I don't have a single competitive bone in my body and would much rather use Buy It Now and decide on a purchase in a leisurely, unpressured fashion.
I finally settled on one listing, a used Jornada that had an opening bid of $20 and a Buy It Now price of $45. No one else was paying it any attention, probably because it was a simple, bare bones auction by a private seller. I prefer these, however. In my experience Power Sellers don't bother answering questions or responding if you have a problem once the auction ends. The listing was a little TOO bare bones though, and I emailed the seller with some questions about what exactly was included and the condition of the item.
I waited about an hour for a response but it never came. I've admitted to myself and Tery that by far my biggest flaw and what is usually my biggest undoing is my towering, thundering impatience. It's just awful and I have virtually no control over it. So after that hour I opted instead for a unit selling for twice as much from a Power Seller, except it came with an extra memory card and collapsible qwerty keyboard as well.
The next morning I heard back from the first seller. He answered both questions positively and I was kicking myself big time for jumping the gun. I checked on his auction and there were only two hours remaining, with still no activity on it. I went back to work but couldn't shake the thought of that PDA there for the taking for a mere $20. What a freaking amazing deal that would be. Yes, it was identical to the unit I had already won, but I also felt fairly certain I'd easily be able to resell whichever one wasn't as nice.
You guessed it. I went for it. I placed a bid for $25, and a damn good thing too because mudbugz1 tried to snipe me in the last three seconds with the same bid. Haha!! I don't have a competitive bone in my body, but that's the second-best way to win an auction.
With two PDAs on their way, I immediately started looking for downloadable e-Books. Yes, I'm all about the Snarry, but it would be nice to catch up on other reading as well. The PDA represents the marriage of my two favorite things in the world, reading and technology. What I'm very keen to read is Running with Scissors for starters. It was while searching for this that I slowly came to the realization that the only books available for free online are those published before 1923. So basically the Bible and the complete works of Jane Austen, and loads and loads of other titles that have been translated into Cliffs Notes. Bah.
Fine. I wasn't averse to paying a small fee for newer releases. But the only site I could find to buy it wanted $17.95 for the file. For that much I could just buy the actual book. So I outsmarted them all. I took a chance with my file sharing program, Frostwire (nee Limewire) and found some titles available. Not Running with Scissors unfortunately, but I got The God Delusion, recommended by my friend Jeffy, Cell by Stephen King, The Thief of Always by Clive Barker (read it once, loved it, barely remember it) and even the V for Vendetta graphic novel. How fucking awesome is THAT?? I searched for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which I've started to reread in preparation for The Deathly Hallows, got a ton of hits, only to discover that most of them were bogus. When I say bogus I mean someone is circulating an e-Book with that title, which begins with Harry and Dudley engaged in a soda-drinking contest to see which of them has to pee first. "Hang on a minute," I thought. "I know my memory is crap but that really doesn't sound right." I guess that's ONE way to get your writing out there. (Never fear. I eventually found the correct version.)
(My quandary of the second PDA has been solved tonight. Tery, who scoffed and rolled her eyes as hard as she ever has when I first told her about it, has since decided that it might be very handy indeed for her manager work. Yep, they all laugh at first, but eventually come around.)
~*~
I like to watch more obscure movies because every so often I stumble upon a diamond in the rough, a movie that appeals to me for unknown reasons that almost no one else has heard of. Impromptu is such a movie, starring a younger, more adorable Hugh Grant as the effeminate Chopin, aggressively pursued by a very butch Judy Davis as George Sand. Another movie in this category is Carrington -- true, I only watched it the first time because I was and always will be madly in love with Jonathan Pryce, but I've grown to love the story for itself beyond what Jonathan brings to it.
So to that end I've rented another Rickman movie. I watched it with MyFriendDeb, who shares my fascination with him to a lesser degree. The film is Mesmer :
Alan plays Franz Mesmer, a doctor from the 1800's who I guess pioneered hypnotherapy (and from whose name we get the word "mesmerize" evidently). He caused great controversy with his techniques and there was a raging debate about whether he was a charlatan. He worked with mostly lunatics and epileptics, when the preferred treatment of the day was bleeding them until they were too weak and anemic to thrash about anymore. His cures involved muttering about humans being out of balance with the cosmos and then running his hands repeatedly down the patient's body. From where Deb and I were sitting, it just looked like a flimsy pretense to rub lots of women's breasts, but it was all good.
The real problems start when he falls for a pretty blind girl, who stays with him at his house for extended treatment, which doesn't please his harpy of a wife one jot. Oh yes, and there's another pretty girl, not blind but who looks unfortunately very similar to his patient, who is living in his attic and is also quite possessive of him. She may be the wife's cousin? Niece? If there's an explanation of her or what she's doing in the attic, Deb and I both missed it.
Despite his laborious, time-consuming work one-on-one with the girl that makes very little progress, he expands his repertoire to include an entire courtyard full of loonies, a passionate and tumultuous scene that nevertheless ends in spectacular failure. It also involves Alan running, and I said to Deb I've never seen a movie with him where he DIDN'T run which was strange given that he runs so girlishly. We both agreed that we didn't hold it against him one bit.
He returns to working with Blind Girl until one afternoon Attic Girl walks in on their intimate touching session, flies at Blind Girl in a jealous rage and knocks her to the floor, hitting her head in the process. Lo! Her sight is restored. Weeks and months of being fondled by Alan and all she needed was a sharp blow to the back of the head (though who wouldn't prefer the first method?) She and Alan run through the courtyard, celebrating her miraculous cure, and share one illicit (and fairly hot) kiss. Which is of course observed by the wife and Alan is kicked instantly and literally to the curb.
Rather than hook up with Blind Girl as you'd expect, he flees to Paris where his demonstrations become more of a parlor trick for very bored rich women. No more hands-on work, but lots of orgasmic moaning and heaving corseted chests in response to his silky voice (perfectly understandable). Eventually he again sits before a panel of his peers who denounce him outright as a phony. As proof, they bring in the Blind Girl, who is again blind (wait, what?) in a scene that is a frame-for-frame replay of the beginning of the movie, very confusing. Nothing is answered, however, because at that moment the French Revolution begins and all the erudite, upper crust snobs are forced to run for their lives, leaving Mesmer and Blind Girl alone. And if I remember correctly, the movie might end there, extremely abruptly and unsatisfyingly.
No, this movie is NOT the diamond in the rough I was hoping for. Whether the fault of the editing or the script or whatever, it was just next to impossible to follow, even had I NOT been bleary and groggy from working the night before. However, I was grateful that Deb didn't mind watching it because we both agree that sitting through 1 hour and 46 minutes of a bad Alan Rickman movie is still better than sitting through 90 minutes of a good Matthew McConaughey movie. 2 out of 5.
~*~
Finally I leave you with some gratuitous full frontal nudity.