The lyf so short

and the Advent season is upon us and soon the year will be over. Felix keeps asking why the year went so fast. I don't think I ever felt that years were going by too fast when I was that young. Birthdays were over too fast, yes. Vacations were over too fast. But years were endless things, and I would not for the life of me have dreamt of feeling in November that the year had gone by too fast. (After all, still a whole month until Christmas! We'll never get there!)

As "getting into the spirit" goes, I suppose this weekend was a good start. On Friday, I actually went to the cinema with my old Ring*Con pal Judith and a couple of friends. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. In 2D (bless) and English (double bless). Which I quite enjoyed, despite having to spend 50 minutes for finding a parking lot (Friday evening in Cologne, I should have known). It turned out not to matter, because the movie started half an hour late. Also, something had gone wrong with the booking so instead of sitting in the penultimate row, we sat in the second row. Maybe that was why a lot of the camera movements were too fast for my brain to parse.
( Potential spoilers, so tread with care )

On Sunday, Felix' Kindergarten had a stall on the tiny local Christmas market and I spent two hours helping to sell stuff. (After first having spent an hour searching for my parents. Oh well.) Personally, I think it showed that we only learned about the stall, like, three weeks prior to the fact (which was, in fact, when the decision was made) so there was no unifying theme to what we were selling. So people were maybe drawn closer by the large folded paper stars, and then discovered that there were no small paper decorations. Or they were attracted by the knitted plushies, and then found that we didn't have other knitted things. Or they saw the cuddly pillows and then saw that we didn't have other retro sewn things. In the two hours in which I was there, we made maybe a hundred bucks.
But as all the things we sold were donations, and the stall was free for charitable institutions, I suppose it was enough of a success to repeat it next year, with maybe a better plan and more time to prepare. At any rate, it gave me a reason to go to the very picturesque and sweet Christmas market in Lüttringhausen, where, in spite of growing up one village over, I had never been before.

After last week's temperatures moved around 10°C, this morning's -2,5°C came as a bit of a surprise and the car was completely frozen. Time to clear the barn enough to use it as a garage again. (At the moment, the driveway is full of firewood that has yet to be chopped.) I still haven't managed to prepare the garden for winter, there's still stuff that needs to be sown and beds to be covered and stuff. But, yeah. I had to do a lot of writing last week (not NaNo-related, alas, but money-related) so I couldn't use the mild weather. And I'll return to that writing now, too. No rest for the wicked...

Hope the 'mericuns (no-maj or otherwise ;)) had a good Thanksgiving weekend. Also hope you'll get your electional eff-ups figured out and sorted... :/

... mal etwas halbwegs Nettes, nämlich eine dringende Kinoempfehlung. Wenn ihr diese Woche ins Kino geht, dann schaut euch doch mal einen netten Fantasyfilm für Jugendliche an (Urban Mythology wäre ein treffendere Genre-Begriff, aber ich glaube, den gibt's noch gar nicht). Mara und der Feuerbringer. Tut es einfach und tut es bald, denn sonst verschwindet der Film gleich wieder aus den Kinos und die beiden Fortsetzungen werden nie gedreht, was Schade wäre, weil das zweite und dritte Buch aus der Trilogie eigentlich noch besser sind als das erste.

Kurzzusammenfassung: Mara will eigentlich eine ganz normale Jugendliche sein, aber da funken ihre esoterisch begeisterte Mutter und ihre ständigen Tagträume dazwischen. Als sich herausstellt, dass ihre Tagträume echte Visionen sind, muss Mara lernen, mit ihrer besonderen Gabe umzugehen - und zwar möglichst, bevor eine Wagner-Figur die Welt (oder zumindest München) ins Chaos stürzt. Bonusauftritte von Loki, Siegfried und Fafnir sowie der fiktionalen Version eines den Tolkienisten unter uns wohlbekannten Professors. (Nein, nicht Tolkien selber.)

Mara und der Feuerbringer leidet natürlich unter dem unhandlichen Titel und unter den üblichen Schwächen deutscher Filmproduktionen, vor allem aber darunter, dass der Film in der Osterwoche zeitgleich mit den wesentlich bekannteren Gespensterjägern angelaufen ist, was das Zielpublikum leider in die falschen Kinosäle zieht.
Dabei punktet Mara durch:
- eine weibliche Hauptfigur
- gut recherchierte mythologische Bezüge
- eine spannende, solide Story
- eine intelligente Buchvorlage UND Einbeziehung des Autors
- eine gesunde Portion Selbstironie, ohne albern zu sein
- bei Erfolg zwei mindestens genauso gute Fortsetzungen.

Für eingefleischte Wagnerianer nur bedingt zu empfehlen, ansonsten aber gute Unterhaltung nicht nur für Jugendliche, obwohl der Film leider größtenteils nur nachmittags gezeigt wird. Also gebt euch einen Ruck, geht ins Kino, sagt es weiter und rettet Mara!

OK WHY DID NONE OF YOU LOOSERS TELL ME TO WATCH RONAL THE BARBARIAN LONG AGO
I AM OFFENDED THAT THIS GLORIOUS PIECE OF HILARITY HAS SO FAR PASSED ME BY

<-- this is mostly geared towards the Europeans in the audience. It's a Danish fantasy parody animation movie (and by "Danish Fantasy", I don't mean those Telerin cookies). Probably rated Quintuple-X in the US, so the Americans cannot be blamed for not knowing it.

It's actually awful, but because it's a parody on serious fantasy and/or its representation in the late 80s and 90s (and thus intentipnally awful, crude, sexist etc.), it comes out on the other end and is FANTASTIC. Taking the utter piss of machismo fantasy. And for all that, it's still got an engaging story (and not the story you expect from the start) and a couple of cute characters!
(It's sort of distracting, really, because visually, it's rather Pixar-ish. And then the characters make crude sexual jokes and run around in sado-maso gear and you go "Whoops! NOT Pixar!")

- - -

In more serious geek news, on Tuesday, Jörg and I went to see Star Trek: 9-11. I mean, Into Darkness.

I liked it ok right up until the last 20 minutes. ( And here goes a spoiler cut )
Oh well. Up until that point, it was engaging and entertaining, so that's OK.

We actually saw it in 3D, and I suppose the technology got better since Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (I used to be a cineaste, WHERE DID THE TIME GO) or at any rate, it is better at the Cinedom than it was at the Metropolis (well, I guess that is true anyway). But it still mostly looks like two or three layers (rather than actually threedimensional space) to me, and as soon as your eyes stop relaxing and try to focus on something out of focus, you get lost and nauseated. Well, and quick sequences with lots of things moving at once are still a blur, impossible to follow. It's really effective with height differences (like the jump of the cliff right in the beginning), which is maybe why it seems to have been to spectaculary succesful in Avatar, but beyond that... I'm still perfectly happy to render 2D into 3D in my own brain (as long as the 2D images are in good focus and in HD ;)), rather than having imperfect 3D thrust upon me.

Right.
Due to LJ being under attack once more (yawn), I missed my annual Happy New Year post.
So,
have a very happy, healthy, creative and delightful new year
belatedly.

I also missed the Professor's birthday toast. Now my fan card really will be revoked for good*.

Oh wait, I missed the birthday toast because I was at the Cinemaxx, FINALLY WATCHING THE HOBBIT. Maybe I may keep my fan card after all?

So. My cinematic experience, the first since Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides. What have I become.

On the technical side, I'm afraid this was a disappointment. The Cinemaxx advertises that you get to see The Hobbit with state-of-the-art technology, but obviously that only goes for the 3D HFR theatres. We went for good old 2D, which was grainy, blurry, disconcerting and, often, nausea-inducing. (Ironically, we'd decided for 2D because we were afraid that the 3D would be, as it so often is, blurry and nauseating...)
Of course, that's not the film's fault.

Further impressions will go under the spoiler cut, just in case.
( Spoilers? Possibly. You may have been warned. )

On the whole, I liked it all right. But I do have a slight headache from the bad quality of the theatre, which is annoying. In the olden days (TM), we used to say that this or that was a film you just had to see in cinema. These days? If it didn't take so bloody long, I'd indefinitely prefer a BluRay on our home TV set.

- - -
*I actually have one, in that I have a membership card of the German Tolkien Society. They don't easily revoke that one, though, as long as you pay your membership fees and don't criminally misbehave.

²The text, in case anyone really wants to know, goes: Panel 1: Fingolfin: "But... how..." - Fingon: "Eagle." - Panel 2: Beorn: "And why did the Orcs not get you?" - Gandalf: "Eagles, my friend." - Panel 3: Elrond: "How did you escape?" - Gandalf: "Eagle." - Panel 4: Elanor: "But why did you not fall off the Eagles' backs?" - Sam: "Because we roped ourselves to them. ... with Hobbit hair OFF OUR FEET."
If you don't get the joke, you should watch Pirates of the Caribbean some time.

OK as I may have mentioned, I haven't touched The Hobbit in eleven years.
So the last time I read that book, I hadn't read the Silmarillion. (SHAMEFUL I KNOW)

I have to admit that I did the book a gross injustice; I had filed it in my head as "cute, but not really to be taken serious, totally whimsical 1930s kiddie book, not at all like the LotR". Which is not wholly untrue, but not wholly true either. I mean, there's a lot already in place, just in allusions and paraphrases.

And then there are the bits I just didn't pick up on, back then. (I would have, had the Annotated Hobbit already been in existence and my property back then, because they really explain all the shit. But it wasn't, so I didn't.)

YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MADE ME REALISE.

PJ totally has the chance to do some Silmarillion stuff even though the rights to that book aren't his, BECAUSE OF ALLUSIONS IN THE HOBBIT.

Like, when Thranduil's merry bunch first fool and later arrest the Dwarves, there's a bit of elaboration on the difference between these wood-Elves and THE ELVES WHO HAD GONE TO FAËRIE AND SOME OF THE DEEP ELVES MADE GREAT STUFF AND SOME OF THEM RETURNED TO MIDDLE-EARTH.
...
...
...
CAN WE HAVE THAT IN THE NEXT FILM PLEASE. SOME SPECIFIC DEEP ELVES IF AT ALL POSSIBLE.
(Fun fact aside: The first German Hobbit translator, Walter Scherf, translated "Deep Elves" as die Unterirdischen, "Underground Elves". BWAHAHAH. Noldor = Drow? XD)
Also, allusions to why the Elves can't stand the Dwarves, because "They had fought wars against each other and the Dwarves stole a great treasure from them but to be fair the Dwarves said they had only taken their due because the Elf king had refused them their proper payment". SACK OF DORIATH OMG OMG OMG! CAN WE HAVE THAT TOO. SILMARILLION FLASHBACKS FTW. INCLUDING VENGEFUL FËANORIANS PERHAPS?
...
SQUEE.

Probably not. If the Nauglamir appeared, its Silmaril would forever be confused with the Arkenstone, so PJ will probably avoid that. Still, a girl can dream. I mean, that would certainly explain the "short book = movie trilogy" development...

Crap, now I got my hopes up. :P

- - -
ETA: further fun with the German translation: Drachen wissen zwar mit all ihrem Besitz nicht viel anzufangen, aber in der Regel kennen sie ihn auf Mark und Pfennig....
Tee hee.
(FWIW, I would've translated that as Heller und Pfennig -- even now, Mark feels too modern. These days, of course, we're using Euros and Cents, but I dearly hope nobody is going to change this in current editions! Also, now I can't help wondering whether there were/are editions going Schilling und Groschen or Franken und Rappen...? XD)

*flail*
HOBBIT TRAILER.

Ok, everything I said about not being excited about the Hobbit movie? Now officially no longer applies.
This actually looks awesome. All of it.
(Though the singing dwarves (sic!) are my favourites.)
Also I may sorta have a crush on Thorin. DON'T JUDGE ME.

Right. Back to giftwrapping!

First things first:
Happy belated birthdays, coppertone, dawn_felagund, juno_magic, kaneda and macalla_! I fail so hard. I hope you all had reasonably enjoyable days, whether you celebrated on a grand scale or not.
- - -

Yesterday I had to decide between being lazy and eating sandwiches or being good and cooking the main course of the fall menu I'd decided on last week. Then I checked the best-before date of the duck and the decision was made for me: either make it now or risk that it turns bad. So I made the duck.
This turned out to be a very good thing (aside from the fact that it tasted awesome) because I then found out that Julie & Julia was on TV. I hadn't seen it before, so I grasped the chance to watch it now, and I don't think it's a movie you can easily watch with nothing but sandwiches (or, for that matter, nachos or popcorn) to go on. Duck à l'orange with mushrooms, pumpkin and sweet chestnuts, on the other hand, was an acceptable accompaniment...

Also yesterday, in a moment of madness, I signed up for NaNo after all. I won't actually be very creative, though: I'll just use the chance (or not) to write a (retrospective, perforce) diary of our first three months with Felix before I forget everything and tell new mothers "Enjoy this wonderful time" myself. (Disclaimer: I love my son and I wanted to have him, but the first three months with a baby are full of horrible, stressful moments, and the last thing you need implied is that it's actually wonderful and you're doing something wrong if you don't think so.) We'll see how that goes. At least I won't have to come up with a plotline ;)

Speaking of Felix, his sleeping schedule (which was reasonable nice for about a week: he only woke once per night) is shot to hell again, meaning that he wakes up and cries miserably three or more times, and has trouble getting to sleep in the first place. *sighs* I really don't know what to do. Everyone and their dog's brother's boyfriend keep telling you that after three months, all should be well sleep-wise. Actually it seems that 40% of children don't develop a sleep rhythm that vaguely matches their parents' until they reach the age of 6 months, or so I've read, but as everyone I know seems to belong to the other 60%, I feel vaguely guilty again. (And I really do my best in terms of good-night, rituals - cuddling, nursing, song and all!) It doesn't help that he seems to be preparing for another growth spurt, which tends to make him peevish anyway.
Oh well. If he already had a rhythm, it'd probably have been shot to hell by the return to Winter Time last Sunday. Now it's dark at 5 pm again. I really wish we'd do like the Russians and stay on Daylight Savings Time all year round.
At least Jörg has a chance to get some sleep - he's on a business trip to Munich this week. His paternity leave ended last week and about the first thing he was told was that this trip had to be taken (for the sake of a seminar that apparently wasn't really worth the long journey, but at least he's away from the company).

This morning I had a bad case of Teh Stoopid: After breakfast and changing Felix' nappies, I went down to the compost heap (because yesterday's duck orgy resulted in lots of organic waste). As I went out the door, I slapped the pocket of my pants and heard the reassuring "clink" of keys, so I cheerfully pulled the door locked behind me. When I returned, I found out that the key in my pocket was the one for the ex-pigsty/now-laundry room. Where was my house key? Well, not out here where I was.
Now normally I would've asked one of our neighbours to use their phone, called the mother-in-law who has a spare key, and then she'd have come over and saved me (us). But the mother-in-law has just had knee surgery: She's lying in hospital and in no shape to come driving anywhere.
After some colourful curses and a short round of the grounds (to pacify Felix, who apparently sensed my agitation and started crying), I tried to lure Mr. Darcy outside - I knew he was inside because he'd insisted on cuddling while I'd been changing Felix diapers; then he curled up in Jörg's Poäng chair and fell asleep. Mr. Darcy is a very clever cat who knows how to open doors, and generally does so when nobody expects him to. Now, however, he was fast asleep and didn't react at all. I waited a while, tried again, then gave up and rang at our tenants' door. Fortunately, these tenants are lovely, lovely people. Mrs. G. immediately dug out the old infant car seat of her daughter and gave me her car keys so I could go to the hospital in Remscheid where, fortunately, the MIL had our key. So all was well - but damn, that was stupid.
About three hours after our return from Remscheid, Mr. Darcy woke up - and opened the back door to let himself out. Thanks, cat, I love you too!

And that concludes today's status update. Take care, be good, and always make sure you've got the right keys on your person!

... and get the hell away from university when Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is on TV, and, watching it, you first go "AAAAH that's designated for a museum will you stop touching it with your bare grubby paws?!"*, and then, when the office hour scene comes around, you think "God I HATE professors like that, will you bloody take care of your bloody students already?!"

Yeah. *facepalm* Note to self: It is a movie. It is not real. It is not realistic, nor meant to be. Shut up and enjoy the ride.

EDIT: --- LOL, there's a floor plan of the Wewelsburg in Daddy Jones' notebook. I NEVER NOTICED THIS BEFORE!


- - -
* One of my exam topics is Museum Anthropology, more specifically The Handling of Anthropologic Objects in a Museum Context. Granted, Anthropology ≠ Archæology, but one should think that with Really Old Stuff you'd have to be even MORE anal careful. YOU, Dr Jones, should damn well know better! Shame on you and SHAME ON YOUR HAT!

Point the first: I am ridiculously empathetic, and I am uncomfortable with heights and fast movement, and for reasons I do not quite understand, I seem to have used so many muscles while sitting in a bloody chair in the bloody cinema that I am now genuinely sore. (Also, washed with adrenalin.) Yes, ladies and gentlemen: I come out of the cinema feeling as though I'd just exercised. For three hours straight. WTF.

On the other hand, there's worse places than Pandora to exercise ;)

We didn't go to a 3D showing after all. Why? Because even though the movie is running in five theatres at once, two of them 3D, and it's been in cinemas for what, three weeks?, it's still selling out, and after queuing for 45 minutes and being offered front row far left seats for the 3D showing two hours later, I spontaneously decided that front row far left 3D can't be that enjoyable and surely the movie is more enjoyable from mid-back middle seats with no 3D.
In hindsight I'm actually glad, because, as barbardin so aptly put it, that was more sense of wonder than you can grasp in one go, and I am soundly overwhelmed as it is. In 3D, I'd probably have thrown up. Or missed half the story.

Not that the story was all that innovative, but still. I had been hesitant to see Avatar at first because the trailer didn't excite me much and I heard things like "just like Pocahontas" and "just like Dances with Wolves" and I wasn't certain whether pretty images would be enough to tide me over a potentially trite/boring story.
Well, for about half an hour I managed to think "well, huh, nothing exciting" and after that I got sucked into the story, and trite or not stopped being a point. There were some parts that I found somewhat annoying, mostly for what may best be described as the American Action Kitsch syndrome, and occasionally for all-too-obvious tropes (did an inward cheer for each subverted trope though, too). Sure, the story wasn't anything you'd never heard before, but it was well told, and in the end, that's what matters. Didn't feel as if the story only existed as an excuse for the technology. Although of course the technology certainly enhanced it, and turned a simple story into a rollercoaster ride.

And Oh. So. Prettily. The mix between "totally alien" and "just vaguely familiar" was perfectly played, I think, from the plants and beasts to the body language of the Na'vi. The world-building was pretty much flawless. Suspension of disbelief total. I bought those flying mountains without a blink. And if the Na'vi were just the tiniest bit too good and the humans, with few exceptions, rather too bad, there were nonetheless just enough characters to identify with. And the Na'vi faith/ explained by human science was a very nice move. :D And Jake was just adorable.

naurring, I had no time whatsoever to look out for exclusive wes or trial plurals or infixes, but the language certainly sounds prettier spoken than it looks written!

So there remain just two sore spots, really:
Unobtainium. They made it Unobtanium in the dubbed version - and German doesn't have "to obtain" - but still. Oh, we have words meaning "to obtain", of course, but we don't have "obtenieren" proper. So Unobtanium doesn't look too different from Ununbium or Ununtrium or any of those other elements that don't have a snaggy personal name yet. I suppose it must be more jarring in the original though, and I do wonder why they didn't come up with a more original name. I mean, they went to such efforts to give the Na'vi a reasonably original language and couldn't invent one stupid element name? Or just take one out of the Periodic Table, I mean, honestly, there's a lot of them?

And: So they spent 300 million dollars on the film but couldn't afford to have their own font developed? I mean, seriously, Papyrus? Not just for the poster title, but for every single subtitle? Papyrus?!

But still, worth the queueing, worth the money, worth the time and worth the sore muscles (wtf body?). There was applause in the theatre after the movie. Applause. For a three-weeks-old movie.
And deserved.

In conclusion: Beautiful. Totally bought it, would buy it again, thanks for flying Air Pandora.

X-Men is on TV. The first one, hat is.

It is very bizarre. We have reached the grand climax and I keep thinking "Hah, as if they could do all that unhindered on top of the Statue of Liberty, what with all the anti-terrorism----"

(Admittedly it's kinda silly to go "Wait, this is unrealistic" about a comic adaptation, but hey, that's the beauty of suspension of disbelief. I can totally get behind mutants and telepathy and all that. I just can't get behind weird goings-on on one of the most well-guarded pieces of America...)

And then I kind of realised that the movie was released in 2000. (And duly notice the Twin Towers in the skyline). IT WAS NOT SO UNREALISTIC BACK THEN.

Sometimes reality is so bizarre.