GOF spoilerless review

Well, GOF mostly sucked, although it wrung many tears from me. Snape licked his words and Our David licked his lips and millions of unnecessary characters got contractual obligation cameos. As usual the trio were 10000000 x more st00pid than everyone else, even Hermione this time. Viktor Krum is a mailbox head but he does have a sexy friend with a beard. Whatever. Roll on OOTP.

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Aieee! Here come the missing LJ emails!

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Everyone who has ever had contact with fans in any way should read High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (or see the film).

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Yahoo! Weather predicts a high of 30°C for today. I was absolutely dying - the trains stopped and there were no busses - so I took a taxi home. Its thermometer read 43°C. (In old money, that's a predicted high of 86°F, but 109°F on the taxi's thermometer.) The BOM measured a peak of 38°C at 3 pm this afternoon.

We now have a ludicrously Dalek-like portable air conditioner, rented at an exorbitant price. THANK GAWD.

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Where does the line "This is why we can't have nice things!" come from? It's driving me nuts. Although at least Elton John's Song For Guy has displaced Joni Mitchell's Free Man In Paris from my brane.

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I like films like Wimbledon very much, but I didn't like Wimbledon very much. :-( Paul Bettany was great (he was even better in A Knight's Tale) but he was basically playing Hugh Grant, to the point where I was sort of wondering if he was the makers' second choice. The plot was terribly obvious; I actually fast-forwarded through the climax because I already knew exactly what was going to happen. I confess, in fact, that I was hoping the comet would hit the Earth. The whole thing had that odd quality of a lot of British films (Dealers is another example) - something to do with pacing, or close ups, or something - which give me the odd feeling that I'm watching them through a pair of binoculars I have the wrong way round.

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It's odd how lies, stupidity, and bigotry go together like tomato, garlic, and basil. I'm sorry, no it isn't, it's not surprising in any way.

The always entertaining (if sometimes appallingly rude) Harangueman posted about a "Love it or leave it" chain letter he received. This splendid bit of Australian jingoism had been so badly reworded from the American original that it informs the receipient that "In God We Trust" is the Great Southern Land's national motto.

The American version includes at least one lie - that a Muslim woman in Florida was allowed to have her driver's licence photo taken with her face covered. The Australian version has shifted the false story to South Australia, so now it's a double lie.

Rummaging around in Google, I found a blogger who uncritically repeated the untruths, and emailed her the link. She replied she doesn't care if it's true or not. That's bullshit, by Harry G. Frankfurt's definition. Or, as Rush put it, in a heavy-handed but well-meaning lyric: ignorance and prejudice and fear go hand in hand.

ETA: The Australian version of the email mentions Sydney's Christmas decorations. A media beat-up last year accused the mayor of cutting the budget for Christmas decorations so as to avoid offending non-Christians. She didn't.

Les Images

Another mystery of my childhood: an arty video thing called Les Images which I think PBS used to trot out regularly while we were living in the Washington DC area in 1980 - 1982. All I can really remember about it is an image of traffic, with a box in which hands play the piano with a distorted aspect ratio. Or perhaps it was the traffic that was distorted. I assume it was a short film, possibly dropped into gaps in the schedule, but I'm not really sure of that. It's possible it was a National Film Board of Canada thing, although I can't find it in their catalogue. After more than twenty years my memories are unsurprisingly vague. Much Googling, alas, has got me nowhere.