Ella Minnow Pea book review

"Ella Minnow Pea" by Mark Dunn was a really interesting book about language. A small island Nollop - outside the US - have built their society around the guy who came up with the pangram "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". When the letters on his statue fall down the council decides this is the will of Nollop and removes the characters from all discourse.

The epistle-based society fall into despair, but do not dare fight the council, and we follow through letters, notes and other written communication the fall of the Nollopian society.

It's a very smart book, with a huge glossary and some interesting grammatical choices as the letters fall, though you have to have a huge vocabulary to follow it - as they start using more and more synonyms I spent an increasing amount of time looking up words in the dictionary, until they lose so many graphemes that they resort to "sound-likes" which makes it difficult to read in a totally different way.

While I really liked the word-play and the intelligence in the language-based writing, I wasn't as fond of the story-telling. I felt the book kept telling me plot threads right before them coming into effect - why doesn't the increasingly tyrannical council read the islanders written communication? Because Nollop said before he died "never to read your neighbour's letters". Literally the next page is the council putting into effect a written-communication checker. He's just French so he won't be able to actually read the letters, keeping true to Nollop's wishes. - and stuff like this happens several times. I also found the tone took a heavy turn towards the end, suddenly becoming very dark, and there's a huge plot element with one of the council members I felt was never acknowledged or resolved.

So, I really liked it as a intelligent language experiment, but not as much as a stand-alone story. I'd recommend reading it if you're interested in language, grammar and creative takes on writing.

On Adam Sandler and his type of comedy

I’m one of those who hate Adam Sandler with a passion because (yes, I will elaborate), because he perpetuates a type of comedy that bases itself on being stupid and demeaning. The main character is an arrogant, selfish, stuck in his own head stupid asshole who inadvertently and on purpose is mean to people and animals around him, but go through some sort of redemption arch so that we’ll sympathize with him in the end, forgetting all the lives he ruined to get there (see Nostalgia Critic’s review of Eight Crazy Nights for a good example). 
During the first part of this video they mention a list of things one expects to see in an Adam Sandler movie, which also perfectly lists why I hate them, as well as talk about how these movies are really just a big scam to advertise and earn their actors money. 

There’s a reason the Mr. Bean movies didn’t work, there’s a reason the Pink Panther remake didn’t work, you cannot do a movie based solely around the concept that your character is an inadvertent asshole that hurts other people, and yet, this is the only thing Adam Sandler does, and he gets away with it! 

To be fair, I’ve seen very few Sandler movies, I didn’t like the two I’ve seen (Hotel Transylvania doesn’t count!), so most of my impressions of his work comes from the horrible trailers, like Click, where they showed me Sandler slowing down a woman to look at her boobs, which, to be fair, was a great way to tell me never to see it, not a good way to make me watch his stuff, but even just from the trailers I feel I’m justified in giving these movies flack for keeping alive the dickish, childish humor, where we laugh at others getting in trouble, and creates an audience for things like this: https://youtu.be/ScMOyURq9os where straight up murdering a cow is played for laughs in the trailer. 

(And yes, I do not like the original National Lampoon movies for the same reason I don’t like this new remake trailer. I can’t stand when animal cruelty is played for laughs. It’s one of the best ways to get me to stop being entertained and instead feel just sad and frustrated. Killing sentient beings shouldn’t be amusing!)

AG Sins - Syberia: Kate Walker is an asshole

I love Syberia, it’s still one of my top 10 games, and the journey you and Kate take throughout the 2 games is both fulfilling and emotional, but it’s also home to one of the worst examples of “I can’t touch that” puzzles in video game history. 
Not only does she refuse to pick up the oar because it’s “dirty and wet”, not only does she treat the poor kid as a grunt, having him do everything for her after asking for “help”, but she could have just walked over the stupid river, it’s what, 2 feet of tranquil water?! 
Is this how you treat other people Kate? 

Syberia is a 2002 point and click adventure designed by Benoît Sokal and developed by Microïds. It was released on Steam by Anuman, who’s supposedly developing Syberia III.

First impressions: Hatoful Boyfriend

I expected a branching, stereotypical romance story with some humour inserted, but there's actually a lot more to Hatoful Boyfriend than it seems at first. I really enjoyed the murder mystery and the hints to a larger meta-plot you slowly gather by playing the different romances. The fantasy sub-plot I ended up on by accident was also quite unique. It seems you can beat "the evil tree" by being stupid but fit..

Also, the Doctor romance really demands that you ignore all the signs and keep going down a path you know will end badly, and fully recognizes it. I was so happy to be told I was an idiot for following that path.
(And I ended up doing both the teacher romance plots first, even though I don't normally like student/teacher romance stories, heh)


Addendum 8.9.2015 - Having finished this game this first impression is really doing a disservice to the full game. I really should write a proper review of Hatoful Boyfriend and its BL story.

This is why I don't do poetry

On the last episode of Top Chef they had to make dishes based on famous New-England writers. One contestant chose Poe - the Raven and described it as a sad and mournful love story about a man who’d lost his beloved, and I seriously went “the Raven is a love story? Since when? I’ve got to reread the Raven”. 

I see the mentions of Lenore when rereading it, but it’s not what I would have focused on in an analysis. 
For me the Raven has always been about a lonely, old man’s decent into depression and paranoia/madness, being haunted by the very thing providing him a semblance of the companionship he seeks. 
The Raven both driving him further into paranoia and madness, while at the same time jolting him out of it by providing a constant presence, and taunting him with the idea that he’ll never have companionship again. (while the Raven in itself is a sign that he’s lost his grasp of reality) 

After all, Lenore is gone, it’s a love lost, it’s more a tragedy than a love story, and I’ve always thought the loneliness he’s experiencing is the focus, not the lost love in itself. 
Also, I seem to be reading the poem a bit more severely than other people. 

It’s just realizing again that I’ve been missing a huge, obvious part of the poem, which is part of the “standard” analysis of it, and would’ve caused me to score badly if I ever were to write about it on a test. 
Bah.

Late night randomness

Some evenings I get this huge urge for unspecified sweets. I do not know what I want, but I know we don't have it in house. So I resist as long as possible, but end up giving up and going to the nearby store, usually an hour/ half an hour before it closes.

There are several problems with this:

I do not like the dark, and get jumpy over strange shadows in my periferal vision. And footsteps freak me out. So after half running to the store, I walk around with a basket, having no clue what I want and just putting in randomness.

Feeling in no way up to shopping I don't manage to follow a shopping list or go to any great effort, but I can't just buy junk either, because then the shop assistant might think I'm only there to buy fatty things (which I am), so I end up picking up random things I can remember from the shopping list.

Not that I really have anything to worry about, as the Rema up the street is the chosen student shop, and really, everyone that was there shopping seemed to be doing the exact same thing I was doing, and picking up some "normal" items just for show, based on their shopping baskets.

So, though I pick up some random things we need, I can't muster to do anything else with them, like putting the bread in the cutting machine. For some reason I really did not want to do that with every fiber of my body.

Also, because I just have an unspecified urge for sweets, I end up buying many different things just to have options.

One last problem, I do not like being in stores when they're about to close. I feel like I'm in the way and causing them to not be able to go home, so when I hear/see things hinting to the store closing (like the shop assistants clearing away baskets) I get really stressed and feel like I have to finish as soon as possible and get out. Which makes going out late at night to shop a rather stressful experience, with really no good reason for doing it..

So tonight I came home with:

sour citrus lips (pick candy)

chocolate pudding

onions

a toothbrush

instant noodles with shrimp flavor (only store that has them in the vincinity, so I always stock up)

cherry tomatoes (offer)

foccaccia w/tomato

two ice creams

mozzarella

bread

chocolate and vanilla cream twist

garlic

Smoothie

Cupcakes

(20. Febuary 2011, Imported from Facebook)

I made (American) cupcakes recently, that turned out great, which is strange, considering my inability to bake.You see cupcake mix should just be gently stirred to mix the ingredients before baked. The thing is, I did not know this, and spent both batches of cupcakes mixing the batter like a mad woman, before giving up and just using it. (it said it should be lumpy, but I assumed they where talking about the chocolate pieces).

So, this tells me two things:

1. I suck at stirring,

2. This works to my benefit with cupcakes..

I've been using ready made packs from the store, but I found an easy cupcake recipie online, and have decided to try making them from scratch next time (somewhat spurred on by the cupcake mix packages costing around 50kr).

So far I've made chocolate cupcakes with chocolate bits and blueverry cupcakes. Would like to try making more healthy cupcakes with hole grain, but I'm afraid of jinxing it.. Oh, and really want to make redcurrant cupcakes!

Oscar nominated animation

Have finally finished watching the Oscar nominated animation shorts.
Interesting combination of animation styles and subjects, not sure what I think about Logorama, the winner. It has too crude humour for me, and I spent the film wishing the Big Boy (?) kid would just die. At least I understood the usage of the logos, as opposed to the previous imdb featured comment, which accused the film of being a marketing vehicle trying to shove as much commercials as it could in 16 minutes..

Of the 5 nominated I personally prefer the Italian "The lady and the reaper", even though it has too much "Benny Hill running around" and the ending was really sad. I seem to prefer animation that tries to convey an emotion, and takes its subject matter seriously, even if it's in a comedy form.

Granny O'Grimm's sleeping beauty is well animated and well voiced, but I wish it had been longer and a bit more complex.

French Roast is a situational comedy, which I actually think should have been shorter, and Wallace and Gromit's "short" (at 30 minutes it's way longer than all the other nominees) follows the standard "Wallace and Gromit" set up. I did like the introduction of some real feelings with Gromit and Fluffles and I think it has improved greatly from the first "Wallace and Gromit" shorts, but for some reason I'm still not very fond of them.

Now I just have to see "The Secret of Kells", and I've seen all the nominated animated films this year, though, the Golden Globes also nominated "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs" which I haven't seen yet, and the Baftas nominated completely different animation shorts.