Texts and twitters

• 18:52 updating for the sake of updating, and chuckling at the weird happenstance of my last update and my most recent twitter follower #
• 23:05 happy. Belgian waffles, good ice cream, whiskey and a gorgeous fiancee. What more does a man need? #
• 01:46 experiencing the joys of a fairly ill but very grisly 4-year-old :-( hope she's better tomorrow. #

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Look, it's better than me texting LJ directly when I'm bored, right? Plus, y'know, microblogging, it's all the rage donchaknow. LoudTwitter

The Golden Compass

Last Friday night, we went to see The Golden Compass, adaptation of Pullman's Northern Lights. It's a book I'd started reading, then stopped as I was enjoying it but had many other books on the go at the same time and wanted to watch the film fresh--I find that if I've recently read a book, I watch the film in "compare" mode, and I've long held that films should be different from the book, else what's the actual point, films are a different medium and thus require different narrative devices to get the same characters and plot across. But in this case, I think my holding off was a waste of time. Jennie reviewed it Saturday, and while I'm not going to review it myself, this review from absinthecity pretty much says what I would:

What this film is, is a series of 'set pieces' taken from the book - the fight scenes, the escape scenes, the meeting scenes - all stuck together with very little in the form of narrative 'glue'. As you'd imagine they are beautifully rendered, with some genuinely well-advised use of CGI, and the acting is first class. But the emotional element...was almost completely absent.

I'll now be putting the trilogy back on the pile, and if they do make films two and three, I'll likely go see, but not because I expect it to be any good. But just to, y'know, take in the scenery. Especially the Eva Miles shaped bits. As for protestations that the boycott worked? Bollox, it's failed at the box office because it's crap, not because the Catholic League decided to not like it.

Who wants to 'purge our society of our Christian history'?

Bah, I see it's getting close to That time of year again. You know the one, the traditional pagan/secular festival that got hijacked by some Roman religion, and people are complaining about attacks on a misperceived majority faith that this poll showed us you lot don't really believe much either. But it did show that most of us are "culturally Christian" even if we don't believe. Hmm, seems we're in good company:

"This is historically a Christian country. I'm a cultural Christian in the same way many of my friends call themselves cultural Jews or cultural Muslims. So, yes, I like singing carols along with everybody else. I'm not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history. If there's any threat these sorts of things, I think you will find it comes from rival religions and not from atheists."

~~Professor Richard Dawkins, author of the God Delusion

Although I dispute his "everyone else" bit—I never did, carols are mostly godawful songs—it's nice to know that he's got a sense of perspective. (thanks Richard).

But, y'know, for the record, I'll update my contact details post at some point, but I still don't plan on sending any cards out, and share with Jennie a fair distaste for receiving them, so if you were planning to, do something a bit more useful with the cash, strictlytrue has the right idea.

Bah Humbug to the lot of you ;-)