I walked to the library just about ten minutes ago, and the scenery outside was just… cold and drafty, but… the sky was a pure cerulean blue, and golden and brown and red leaves were falling all over the place… and on the ground, there were swaying patches of intense sunlight and then cool darkness below the trees… and the clouds, although white, had ponderously darker gray shadows underneath, as if they were deliberating on whether to rain…
GAAAAAAAAAH!!!! Scratch all of that out!!!
I just found out TODAY, that Jay Chou’s newest album, Jay Chou on the Run, is being released globally on November 2. Which is five days from today!!!
I found a decent post on a Jay Chou news forum describing his new musical direction and what he’s doing with his image for the album… which is, needless to say, COWBOY ATTIRE! I was just perusing Misaki-san’s blog for posts I missed since my brief absence, and she posted the YouTube video for Jay Chou’s newest music video. I must say, I was a bit shocked, but the video was frickin’ awesome!!! American cowboys never looked so good.
Anyway, got to go. I’m going to go hunting at Goodwill for pieces of my Halloween costume. I’ll tell you more about that later.
(Suitable prologues to this post: my reviews for Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight and New Moon. The current subject is Eclipse, third installment in the series.)
Hands down, this is perhaps the worst book I’ve ever read.
Excerpt from back cover:
In the dead silence, all the details suddenly fell into place for me with a burst of intuition.
Something Edward didn’t want me to know.
Something that Jacob wouldn’t have kept from me.
Something that had the Cullens and the wolves both in the woods, moving in hazardous proximity to each other…
Something I’d been waiting for anyway.
Something I knew would happen again, as much as I might wish it never would.
It was never going to end, was it?
Indeed. When will it ever end?
And referring back to the post title, here is the reason I thought Eclipse was “inappropriately” titled, in the most acute sense of the word:
to eclipse
- (transitive) Of atronomical bodies, to cause an eclipse.
The Moon eclipsed the Sun.
- (transitive) To overshadow; to be better or more noticeable than.
The student’s skills soon eclipsed those of his teacher.
Um, excuse me? This miserable excuse for a novel is incapable of overshadowing anything, unless you count that talking-hooded-monkey-assassin short story that my brother wrote more than a year ago.
…
Oh, wait, now that I consider it… nope, even talking assassin monkeys are 500 times more entertaining and better-characterized than this load of shit.
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Behold! The enemy is among us! —————>
OK, OK, I was just kidding. That really is a far cry from my real attitude regarding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to the U.S. today. For those of you who didn’t read my last protected post (and I really must congratulate you if you managed to crack my top-secret password), I mentioned yesterday that Ahmadinejad was invited to come speak at a forum at Columbia University. TODAY. Yes, today. Here in the U.S.! In New York! Today! So close, yet so far…
Yet, predictably, Ahmadinejad’s visit has already been marred by a round of protests from students and politicians alike. Some, like me, are perfectly willing to allow him to make his views heard. Others have already condemned this event as a “perversion of free speech” and some brilliant politician out there contributed this equally brilliant quote, stating that “There is no excuse to have this madman, this little Hitler who is running around all over the world killing our soldiers. This is immoral. This is outrageous. This is sick.”
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“What am I supposed to do / I don’t wanna be your referee, but…”
Ugh. Lolita is a disturbing piece of work. Of course, the prose is quite beautiful and very unique, from a stylistic point of view… but being privy to a thirty-something man’s relentless obsessions over a twelve-year-old girl isn’t an entirely… wholesome experience, I’ll admit. Hahaha. Nevertheless, still very beautiful… (the language, I mean.)
Books I currently covet from afar (but haven’t the money to purchase):
I’m also (rather relucantly and furtively, for the lack of anything better to occupy my time) looking to obtain a copy of Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer. I spent about two hours at Borders the other day, poring over manga and vegetarian cookbooks and privately debating whether it would be prudent to shell out twenty-ish bucks for the thing… that is, until I imagined a certain friend’s expression of amusement and smugness and my subsequent abashment, not to mention my disappointment/disgust and prompt disposal of the dratted thing anyway. (I did place a hold for it at the library, though. But I was shocked and mortified to discover I was no. 129 in the queue. Number 129! I mean, one hundred and twenty-nine!! (How shall I count the ways?) Before moi, there are one hundred and twenty-eight uncultivated chick-flick lovers and hopelessly lowborn readers of teen romance novels… One hundred and twenty-eight self-professed fans of the abominable star-crossed, heart-fluttering, eyelash-batting lovers Bella Capulet and Edward Montague… And one hundred and twenty-eight spineless, and in all probability mentally retarded idiots wasting away their library’s resources in order to wait hopefully in line for what’s bound to be the sappiest, most irritating piece of melodramaticized vampire romance shit ever published. Don’t they have any proper shame, the morons?)
At any rate, I’m looking forward to a meal of pasta and pesto later today. Sarà delizioso (which would be “Será delicioso” para los hispanohablantes). Hmmm, has it stopped raining yet?
- Currently Reading: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Listening To: "Blow My Whistle" by Hikaru Utada & Foxy Brown
I heard a rumor last year that Philip Pullman’s children’s novel, The Golden Compass, also known outside of the U.S. as Northern Lights, would soon be made into a film. Today, I found the official Web site and trailer.
Apparently, the film stars Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra, Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter, and Daniel Craig (you know him from Casino Royale) as Lord Asriel. Somehow I thought Mrs. Coulter had brown hair… but oh well! The production stills look reaaaally cool.
Must-see links:
December 2007… I can’t wait.