Not to worry old chaps, 'cause they keep away the triffids. 
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
Rant, moan, rave and share - for all your chatter, natter, ETCETERA! 2013/2014
They are Triffachnids, with their massive webs stretching from every tree and bush. You can't step outside without getting caught in multiple webs - why can't they pick on someone their own size?
They do seem to get bigger every year. Maybe they're practising for they day when they really can wrap us up for later.
e: I killed the rant thread.
Ermergerd guys! WTF? No one has been posting much at all! Erk!
Get back in here!
I'm back. I'm buggared but I'm back
If no one is posting I will take up the slak and just fill the place like Jabba the Hut.
But not tonight because I am so tired… It's great to use a real keyboard again and not always a smartphone or tablet!
D: Sorry! I'm back at university now, which both keeps me very busy and makes my life very dull for anyone but me. Example rant: my South African History class which has tons of cute guys in it was cancelled this week…which I didn't find out until I had already been at school for two hours between classes.
We've also taken in a stray cat who was living in our yard for a couple of weeks. He's a lovely big guy with a grey mane and bright yellow eyes, so we've called him Dandy (short for Dandelion). We took him to the vet and had him checked out and gave him his shots and everything. He's staying in the porch until we get all the other animals a bit more used to him, so hopefully that goes well.
Welcome back Oz!
Tall travel tales please.
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Hipster, me and my college friends adopted a stray cat and it turned out she was full of kittens. So many kittens we were evicted from our flat. I'm glad yours is a boy!
—
Nail biting times: Scotland could break from the UK today. That could be bad news for us.
There are so many public cats in Europe! I say public rather than stray because they seem to live as everyone's cats out in the open quite happily, fed by everyone, rasing their families in public and seem far greater than the amount of cats people own personally…
In places where there are a lot of those cats at least people seem to treat them as their pets rather than actually have a pet cat of their own.
Out of the places I spent time in Turkey has by far the most of these cats and the people are the friendliest and most tollerant of them. There don't seem to be any rules on pet ownerhip in houses or apartments or on taking animals with you onto public transport or into shops or whatever, which seems prety cool.
European cats that I saw were all very small, even the biggest, meanest tomcats were the size of juvenile cats in Australia… Un general they're prety dwarfish and very cute.
Most of them are freindly it seems, because people treat them well, putting food scraps out for them in the evenings, especially around food stalls and restraunts.
So that's the cats!
——————–
Bianka, aka Pinky, aka my travel compainion, was a bit of a trial.
When we had fun, we had fun, but our personalities and interests are so wildly different that we can't get on for much of the rest of the time. Sometimes I really wonder why we're even friends, but for some reason we still hang out anyway. I suppose it's like a brother and sister relationship- you can hate each other but you still feel a bond anyway and you still care about the other person.
Had some good times but I am very glad to be a long way away from her again.
—good stories maybe later. :)
I met Tantz in Athens and hat was very cool. I SO wish I could have stayed longer there!!!!!
Call Me Tom wrote:
You know more than there was before!
I remember my dad telling me about a party he went to in Scotland years ago, celebrating some significant date. He had a wild night of singing and carrying on, they kept buying him more drinks and were generally the friendliest people on the planet.
After raising his glass for about the 20th time, my dad says "What is it we're actually toasting here?", to which the reply came:
"Crossin' th' border at night an' slittin' th' throats ay th' English soldiers in their beds!"
That whole Scottish independance stuff is so strangley ironic since Scottland has done more to make the British Empire what it was than any other territory. The independance argument os just so amazingy superficial, based on manufactured nostalgia and misplaced nationalisim.
——
I have a nice little (or big) infection insode my nose. It's putting oreasure on my sinus and making me feel like shit. It cost me $100 for the antibiotics ($75 for the Dr apointment for the prescription and $25 for the actual pills). If I'd have followed Tantz Arein's advice I'd have had a nice pack of antibiotics over the counter for $4 Euro in Athens ready for just such exingincies as this. -_-
ozoneocean wrote:I just finished reading a great new biography of Queen Anne and the debate about the Act of Union three centuries ago was also amazingly superficial and based on manufactured nostalgia and misplaced nationalism. And it didn't hurt that Marlborough was creating some real national pride. Of course making Scotland part of a new nation so they'd stop slipping across the border and slitting the throats of English soliders because that army would increasingly become full of Scots. And make Scotland less likely to support the Stuart Pretender because they were now part of Great Britain with the Cross of St Andrew merged with the Cross of St. George into a really nice new flag.
The independance argument os just so amazingy superficial, based on manufactured nostalgia and misplaced nationalisim.
Also saw the wonderful BBC miniseries the First Churchills. After reading the book I wanted to see those vicious fights between Lady Churchill and Queen Anne recreated and I wasn't disappointed. And people really knew how to dress circa 1670-1710.
Historically Scotland has been wierd… But a lot of that is also tied up in religion though, isn't it? Catholic Scotts, Protestant English, at least that was the story way back when with Queen Mary and others. Later on it was reversed a bit with King James II of England.
There was always lots of awful, serious, and also petty nationalisim in the territories of the UK with the Welsh, Scottish, English, and Irish. With just as much if not more between the peoples of those teritories themselves. The Scotts loved to kill each other, as did the Irish and English. I don't know about the Welsh.
————
Speaking of Irish - It's a universal truth that there will be many "traditional and authentic" Irish pubs in whichever country you visit.
The touristy beach town of kusadasi in Turkey has some of the silliest:
One street devoted entirely to "traditional and authentic" Irish pubs, wall to wall on both sides of the road. They're bad nightclubs with loud shitty music, coloured lights, no tables and a few idiots dancing in them. They sell coloured cocktails and have harps on their signs.
I really couldn't work out why they bothered with the "irish" thing, unless they're being clever and meta (NOT something nightclub owners are known for), and instead of the twee shit we're all used to they're actually being modern belfast clubs or something.
ozoneocean wrote:And London boasts an authentic Boston "Cheers" bar. But a much better beer selection than any American bar ever. They had Samuel Smith's Oatmeal stout on tap!
Speaking of Irish - It's a universal truth that there will be many "traditional and authentic" Irish pubs in whichever country you visit.
London also has some of the worst "authentic American Steakhouse" steaks ever.
I think there was a cheers bar in the same town actually! I didn't go in though…
Well I know there was a cheers bar somewhere. It all blends into the same town after a while.
I remember when my mum was in Boston a couple of years ago, I begged her to visit one of the two Cheers bars (that I know off), and she never did! Gah! But then she's like me in that we are really shit at visiting tourist landmarks.
——
More holiday impressions:
Turkey is generally a pretty cool, liberal country, but the current President is trying to fuck that up. So many people hate that fucker and his headscarf covered wife with her creepy fake pious smile, but he's shipping in people from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.
Amusingly most of the Arab speaking people have to communicate in English with the Turks because no one can understand their accent when they try and speak Turkish!
Turkish TV is better than a lot of Euro TV in that they don't dub as much and will actually use subtitle instead (Germany is THE worst for dubbing), but because of the current political regime they censor stuff like crazy!
Anytime someone calls someone an idiot or something it's blanked out. Not even just swearing, I'm talking simple "you dunderhead!" level stuff. Also blood:
All blood is blurred out completely.
I saw a movie where a guy got hit in the head by a shovel. His face started to blur as was the end of the shovel. He put his hands to his bleeding head and both of them started to blur too! Blood got on his jacket which cause it to blur! He put his hands on a wall, leaving blur marks!
Heaven help them during a slasher movie.
A fair amount of catholic/protestant tension within Scotland itself as far as I'm aware ozone. I know some football matches north of the border are more about religious conflict than sporting prowess.
As for Irish bars, I'm amused to hear they exist right across Europe in bizarre forms. Not surprising though - playing on those notions of Irish congeniality, even when it's just tagged on as an afterthought. The American Steakhouses must be going for a similar approach:
bravo1102 wrote:I've always wondered what those weird places are about. They must attract tourists to survive- I don't know anyone who's ever eaten in one and I've only heard bad reports about their product. It's odd because the UK is actually undergoing something of a food renaissance and if you buy steak from a butcher, you can literally find out what farm it came from and probably even what the unfortunate cow was called.
London also has some of the worst "authentic American Steakhouse" steaks ever.
We even have our first female butcher :
Very grim image!
I was first introduced to (but never went in) to the concept of the Aussie themed "outback steakhouse" in the US. Apparently they're everywhere there. Last year I was appaled to find them here in Australia as well!
Why in the world do we need Australian themed "outback steakhouses" IN Australia?? WHY? I can't understand it.
More "traditional" food in Australia used to be pepper steaks (not big huge thick things though), fish and chips, roast lamb, roast beef, meat pies (filled with minced beef), pasties (mainly vegitarian), tea and scones.
So basically stuff of British origin.
I do think there's a place for that simple, old style fare. It's great to have much more cosmopolitan, more international influenced foods (which we do now)with lots of variety, tastes and flavours, but it it's not so great to completely cut ties with older traditions.
That is always bought home to me when I travel overseas. I don't want to eat fancy themed or internationally influenced stuff in foriegn coutries, rather I want to try what is normal ordinary traditional style food for the inhabitants so I can see how truly different it is, not some modern mockup. And it can be very hard to find sometimes, even for locals.
That was one of the great things about traveling with Bianka, being a native German from Colonge and also having lived in Turkey she knew what to look for. Tantz Ariene was great in Greece too!
- Though the "spinach pie" I'm used to from the Greek restraunts in Australia) and the stuff my mum makes) is much nicer to me than the stuff you get comonly from delis and cafes in Athens: the real Greek ones are made with much thicker, harder pastry that's folded all the way through them. They're very leathery and dry. The Aussie ones are made with very thin, crispy, papery filo pastry so the filling of cheese and spinach is the stranger taste and texture than the pastry.
I just went to an Outback Steakhouse (stateside, of course) one month ago. I ordered their Toowoomba Pasta. Toowoomba is a city in Queensland, I guess. Some of the menu items were questionable as to whether they had a legitimate Australian origin. The French onion soup was probably not fully authentic.
The one food item that can be found across the board in the EU is the classic doner kebab/shawarma/gyro. They all claim to have different origins, hence the different names, but they are the cheapest, fastest sources of protein that can be found in a pinch and can satisfy meat cravings because they are always really delicious.
I love it when a country and its nationals have a British connection. For instance, Gibraltar is this TINY country at the southern most point of Spain and without a doubt, the local inhabitants are very British. I wandered into a quaint gastropub that served up all sorts of traditional foods like meat pies and Yorkshire pudding. The food was GREAT, but the only drawback was that it was right across the street from a cemetery. The only food I ever bought in London's Heathrow airport was a rocket (arugula) sandwich that cost me way too many euros than I care to remember.
Hahaha, Tawoomba pasta… yeah. As Australian as any dish you could lay claim to in a country these days :D
Traditional Aussie food is rather more British, yes. Though the average Aussie will swear black and blue that it's clearly not… But no, not till as late as the 1980s did more international things start to influence our national quisine in a serious way, and even then it was a case of "cultural cringe" more often than not (We're embarrassed about ourselves so we try and cover it up by appropriation).
But part of that was also finally accepting the food choices of our more diverse immigrant population (rather than just the majority from the UK), as part of our national idendity to an extent, (which means the generations of Greeks and Itallians). Also in the '80s we had a massive influx of people from Vietnaam and South East Asia so we finally had a lot of good variety in our restraunt choices!
Generaly we're too young a country to lay claim to much "tradional" foods, but somewhere with the name "outback steakhouse" or "outback jacks" should really serve the types of food they eat in the outback: Pepper steak, ordinary steak (neither case are they those massive things people in the US eat), fatty lamb chops, and great big hamburgers consisting of a big greesy beef patty, iceburg lettuce, tommato, tommo sauce, onion, a fried egg, and plenty of beetroot.
And surprise, surpirse the Olive Garden is not genuine Italian cousine either. Olive Garden and Outback Steakhouse are branches of the same theme resturant company.
The original menu at the Outback Steakhouse was much more "authentic Aussie" than it is now. In the last 5 years the food has gone generic American Bistro. There used to be big greasy burgers and thin cut steaks (comparatively speaking) and that Blooming Onion. They got rid of my favorite dish which was the Drover's Platter of ribs and BBQ chicken. Long gone. It's noted in many food forums that the place has taken a nose dive the past 5 years or so.
The swelling inside my nose, against my left sinus is SO fricken painful! It makes my left eye sting as well.
I'm taking antibiotics and painkillers for it regularly. UGH!
It even caused swelling on the outside on the skin over the nose cartilage, not just the inside, which is why it hurts so much: because that flesh is so thin there over the bone and cartlige, no room to expand. Any fluid in that thin tissue is overkill…
Time for more painkillers now. fuck.
First day back at work tomorrow. I was supposed to go back on Friday but I didn't feel like it, plus my nose thing started then in earnest.
It feels like my nose has been badly sunburnt and then whacked with a brick.
Sinusitis is a pain. I remember having to go through with it once before in my life and the remedy was this nasal spray can of saline solution that would flush out all the mucus and dirt from the nasal cavity…and this was the grossest part: all of that gunk would be ejected through the mouth. Feel better, Oz! Maybe wear those surgical masks so no one bothers you at work.
—
Here is a funny little train of thought:
So after all the talk about Outback Steakhouse (and the Drover's platter of ribs), I googled "Drover". A drover is an Australian term for a cattle rancher, much like cowboys in the States. It turns out, Hugh Jackman played an Australian Drover in the 2008 film "Australia". After watching the trailer for Australia, I watched some clips of Les Misérables where Hugh Jackman played Jean Valjean. This sent me on a Youtube watching spree of the saddest parts of Les Misérables for the next hour. I probably watched Eponine's death scene with the song "A Little Fall of Rain" about seven times. Then I got sad and went to the DrunkDuck forums to get my mind off of it, but then I remembered it all began with Outback Steakhouse.
Unfortunately, unlike sinusistus, this is an abcess type infection; inside the skin/muscle rather than the nasel cavity. The swelling presses on the nerves around the sinus and the eye, but insn't inside there.
The benifit of that is I don't get the spread out pain of sinusitus, which can go into the upper and lower jaw, the ear, the side of the jaw, the cheek and all around the orbit of the eye because of those annoying channels
The disadvantage is that without a premade cavity there's no room for the infection and inflamation to spread so it hurts a lot more in its specific locality, like a clown balloon where you've twisted one end off and now you're squeezing it to bursting.
———
Enough about semi-medical ick.
Speaking of Huge Jackman, I saw him in that latest X-men movie the other day. It really was as good as Banes said it was, much better than the other X-men films!
I loved the style, the humour, the actors (for the most part), the setting and the characters.
I did have a coulple of small issues with it though:
1. The setting at the start with them running from the ultrons was way too thin. Not enough setup there. All scenes with them in that world seemed like an afterthought, or even part of a stage play, not a movie and not reality.
2. Similarly with the X-men school setting, it was so thin. They didn't bother to explain why things as they were or what the place was supposed to be, it just was, and it was abandoned and messed up for whatever poorly hinted at inference.
Those ware the most major complaints I had and they're really pretty minor because I liked the film so much and they're not pivotal to the story working, they'd only add colour and make things go a little smoother, be more polished. But it works ok without them.
And two even more minor niggles while I'm at it:
1. They used the wrong actor for "Beast". He as tall but too skinny, his features were too tiny and under developed; small nose and mouth, with a very narrow body frame etc. Good for a pretty boy bad not good for a man who has to play a muscley monster wearing a lot of make up.
When in beast mode his face makeup overwhelmed his actual features, almost turning his head into a hairy blue arse with his little face trapped in the bumcrack in the centre. The muscle padding on his narrow shoulders and thighs just pushed everything closer together and made him look like a skinny guy trying to wear Grid Iron padding.
2. The guy who played the hippie Dr Xavier could not have been more unlike Patrick Stewart if they tried. The only thing he had in common what they he's from the UK… somewhere. You could have used a Chinese actor or a woman from the West Indies and it'd have been as convincing.
That isn't hyperbole; I really beleive that.
But those are both my own personal problems with aspects of the style and don't hurt the film at all. It was good, funky and fun. The '70s setting was cool, I LOVED the speedy guy (I forget the character's name), the use of the drawf actor from Game Of Thrones… good movie overall!
X-Men: Days of Future Past was the one movie I looked forward to seeing months before its release and I could happily end 2014 without seeing another movie because this movie was "it" for me.
The Negatives
-Save for Patrick Stewart, Ian Mckellen, and Hugh Jackman, I really did not care much for the early 2000s cast. Apparently the director did not either because Storm was shot down pretty quickly considering that she was Storm.
-The Vietnamese military officer being seduced by Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique. It was Mickey Rooney cheesy.
The Positives
-James McAvoy. He is the "hippie" Professor Xavier. He is a Scottish actor from Glasgow and that is the origin of his accent. I will admit it, McAvoy is number one on my list of male actors.
-Michael Fassbender. I do not even need to elaborate for this one.
-Peter Dinklage. Only because he and James McAvoy were both in the great film Penelope many years before either hit big time fame.
-The 70s. It was such a cool period to film.
-Agreed. The Quicksilver dude was probably the coolest character to introduce. The kitchen scene where the song "Time in a Bottle" plays in the background was so awesome, I think I was at the edge of my seat for it. But the actor plays a teenager, like a hyperactive kid on sugar. I had to make sure the actor was born in the 80s before I made any comments about his looks.
-Did I mention James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender?
-A small, yet quick reference to four mutants who were in the last film but died. I have a feeling that Emma Frost, Banshee, Angel, and Azazel will ALL RETURN in the next film Apocalypse as the Four Horsemen (you know, for continuity sake).
Pretty much, Days of Future Past was a loving apology letter for X3 where they blew up Professor Xavier and killed off most of the original cast because Phoenix was PMSing. I really like the direction the reboot has been heading, but I think X-Men: First Class is still my favorite. This movie comes in second.
That's a more knowlegable review :)
From what I've seen of the other X-men films they sort of belnd a bit into one for me… I'll have to watch them again sometimes, except that terrible one with Sabretooth and the origin stuff with Wolverine. That was interminable!
(I have no idea who Michael Fassbender is)
The other superhero films I saw were Gaudians of the Galaxy and Captain America: Wintersoldier.
Gaurdians was an amazing film. It made me feel like a little kid again. I've never read the comics and know NOTHING about them at all, so I have no bias there, it was just a really fun, cool, fantastic movie.
A negative:
It sagged a bit in the middle. It slowed down and lost its perfect rythmn in the section where they were handing over the majic doodad to the collector guy. That bit is in need of re-editing to fix it. That's not a minor complaint either; that section really didn't work well with the pacing and feel of the rest of the movie… like an out of place drum solo in an otherwise great song.
BUT, it got back on track again after that part was over. Lots of good performances there. The lead actor guy from Parks and Rec stole the show, he was brilliant.
Captain America 2 wasn't nearly as good a film as Gaurdians and not even as good as the first Captain America fim.
I've never read the comics for that either but I do have a bias in that I don't much like stories about insitutions being betrayed and inflitrated from within: It's very much over done and done and done and done, so if YOU do it you have to do something interesting with it, and these guys didn't. We have a lot of the same old tropes.
My other problem with that betrayal theme is that Captain America as a concept works REALLY well when he exists in a world of black and white, like the traditional idea of WW2: baddies on one side, goodies on the other, with Cap representing the White Knight of the good old USA, with its full backing and support, against the dastardly Hydra themed evil Nazis.
When you grey that up, Cap loses all of his power and shine: Instead of a meta-human avatar of a nation and goodness, he turns into just a big guy who punches things.
The three hovercarriers didn't have the wow factor of the single carrier in the first film, none of it did, but it felt like that was what they were deliberitely trying for. The political theme about stability at the cost of freedom sort of ok, it's very current, especially the idea of targeting US Citisens and armed drones, but the way they handled it was increadibly simplistic. Should not have bothered.
All in all Captain America 2 had a mid to bad story, with anoying and uneven pacing throughout. The acting was ok though mostly, but no real standout performances from anyone. Robert Redford was actually pretty bad.
ozoneocean wrote:I thought it was one of the weaker marvel movie plots, but who ever stunt doubles and coreographs the fights for cap is one of the best i've ever seen in films, period. Slow down some of the fights in that movie, especally on the boat. The shield switching between the arms..we've come a long way since the ugly cgi sky dancers twirling in avengers.
Captain America 2 wasn't nearly as good a film as Gaurdians and not even as good as the first Captain America fim.
I've never read the comics for that either but I do have a bias in that I don't much like stories about insitutions being betrayed and inflitrated from within: It's very much over done and done and done and done, so if YOU do it you have to do something interesting with it, and these guys didn't. We have a lot of the same old tropes.
———
I don't wanna go to work and yet i have absolutely nothing to do here at home. So if I go to work i'll be bored, but if i stay home i'll be bored.
….maybe i'll look for another job today.
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