The Sandman Vol 5: A Game of You (1992) Neil Gaiman
Barbie, who we first met in The Doll’s House, has moved to New York City after her break-up with Ken. She hasn’t dreamed for two years, when she was pulled into the dream vortex created by Rose Walker, but Barbie’s Dreamworld is not content to remain lost.
There have been a lot of people saying that the American response to Katrina was racist (and thus that Bush is racist) because so many African Americans remained in New Orleans, with no way to evacuate, and then were left to suffer without assistance.
Well, as much as I dislike Bush, I don’t think he’s a racist. I just think he doesn’t give a damn about the poor.
But I came across something very interesting in one of the articles I’m reading for my gerontology class. (Culture, Diversity, and Aging) Let me quote:
Black people are more likely not only to live in lower-SES (socioeconomic status) communities than non-Black people but to live in lower socioeconomic communities than non-Black people with the same income level. For example…in metropolitan areas in 1990, only 6.3% of poor white people lived in high poverty areas, compared with 33.5 percent and 22.1 percent of poor Black and poor Hispanic people, respectively.
Robert, S.A. and Lee, K.Y. (2002) Explaining Race Differences in Health among Older Adults: The Contribution of Community Socioeconomic Context. Research on Aging, 24, 654-683.
Maybe we live in a society where there is not as much overt racism as in the past, but we certainly haven’t escaped the legacy of racism.
The Sandman Vol 4: Season of Mists (1991) Neil Gaiman
Season of MistsSeason of Mists is the story of Dream’s journey to Hell to free Nada, after he is confronted by the fact that he unjustly sent her there ten thousand years before. All the stories in Seasons of Mists are part of a single tale, of Dream’s trip to Hell, and the aftermath of that trip.
Just got done watching “O’ Brother Where Art Thou” and it was very good, except for the short person.
The Sandman Vol 3: Dream Country (1990) Neil Gaiman
Dream Country is the third book in the Sandman series. In this collection of short stories, Dream is peripheral character for the most part, though in “Facade” Death appears instead.
The Sandman Vol 2: The Doll’s House (1990) Neil Gaiman
There is a vortex in the Dreaming, that Dream must control before it destroys the Dreaming. He must also find four of the major arcana that have wandered from the Dreaming: Brute and Glob, the Corinthian, and Fiddler’s Green. Meanwhile, Rose Walker searches for her younger brother, and discovered that she has a before unknown grandmother–Unity Kinkaid.
Today’s word of the day is perfect.
execrable \EK-si-kruh-bul\ adjective
1 : deserving to be execrated : detestable
*2 : very bad : wretched
It perfectly describes last night’s movie. Though really, I think wretched fits better. As in, “yesterday evening we watched Alexander and it was wretched.”
How on earth did they manage to make a movie about Alexander the Great so bad? Especially when the acting was so good? But, no. I was bored even through the bashing with swords bits. The scenes between Alexander and Hephaistion were nice, as were the dancing girls, but beyond that?
The jumps in time really were execrable, interrupting the flow of the story, time and again. If I had to point to the single biggest problem I had with the movie, that would be it.
The accents were confusing–if they were from the same region, why did they have different accents? As he traveled, encountering different accents made sense, but why would a group of people living in Macedonia–especially a group of children who grew up together–have different accents? It just made it even harder to keep track of who was who, which was already a next-to-impossible job.
And his eyebrows. I couldn’t stop staring at his eyebrows. They were so brown. And his hair was so blonde. My disbelief kept jumping up and saying, “that’s just odd looking. Why wouldn’t they have been bleached in the sun like his hair?”
I just don’t get it. I LOVE history. And a movie where the guys run around scantily clad the whole time should have plenty of redeeming qualities. But no. I just kept asking, “is it over yet?”
So, bah. Hopefully the rest of the movies we rented will be better.
Because he saw the wallpaper on my computer and yelled, “Vera!”
“I think my days of taking you seriously are definitely coming to a middle.”
So.
As you have undoubtedly noticed, in addition to Random (but not really) I keep a book blog where I post reviews of the books I read.
Mostly because it allows me to keep track of how many books I’m reading.
But that’s not the point.
The question is this: I’ve started out just writing about the books I’ve read, and talking about whether I liked them or not. And I frequently conceed that just because I hate something doens’t mean that someone else won’t like it. So in light of that philosophy, and in light of some of the book review sites I’ve been perusing, when I review a book, should I give it a score or a grade based upon how much I liked it, or should I leave things the way they are?
I can see advantages and disadvantages of both ways. Sometimes I may not be completely clear about how much I like or dislike a book, and so a grade or score may make that more clear. But on the other hand, I don’t want to discourange people from reading a book just because I disliked it, and so if I gave a book an F might someone consider that more than the points I made about why I disliked the book?
I dunno.
So please share your opinion on the subject. And if you have no opinion about this subject, feel free to share an opinion on another subject.
The Sandman Vol 1: Preludes and Nocturnes (1989) Neil Gaiman
The first volume in the Sandman series, Preludes and Nocturnes tells of Dreams capture by Roderick Burgess, his eventual escape, and his recovery of his bag of sand, his mask, and his ruby.
A conversation earlier this evening.
Me: So, I don’t understand.
Michael: What?
Me: When the the cloaked Romulan-Cardassian task force massed to go through the worm-hole, the station noticed something happening, even though they didn’t realize it was cloaked ships. How come they didn’t notice a hundred or so cloaked Klingon ships sneaking up on them?
Michael: Well, the Romulan ships use a singularity in their cloaking devices that allows them to be tracked… (I think there was also something about quantum distortions)
Me: So their cloaking devices are different?
Michael: Yes.
Me: Why don’t they change their cloaking devices so they can’t be caught?
Michael: Well, they’d have to redesign and retrofit…
Me: Waitasecond… If the Federation and the Klingons have a peace treaty, why does the Defiant have a Romulan cloaking device and not a Klingon one?
Michael: Well, the Klingons go through a lot of changes and their government isn’t very stable…
Me: So because the Klingon empire is so chaotic Starfleet didn’t want to deal with them?
Michael: Yes.
Me: You know what? I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.
Don’t forget! Septembre 19th is Talk Like a Pirate Day!
In preparation:
My pirate name is:
Black Ethel Bonney
Like anyone confronted with the harshness of robbery on the high seas, you can be pessimistic at times. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate’s life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!
If you had problems getting here earlier, it’s because my webhost is in LA, so I got knocked down by the power outage there.
I, of course, did not realize that iPowerWeb was in LA, so now I feel like I should back up my entire website, just in case California falls into the sea.
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