Tuesday, July 24, 2007

A disgusting habit

Spitting is disgusting, isn't it? Yet a lot of people here are doing it everyday. I always say to myself whenever and wherever I spot someone spits: "OMG! What the hell is he/she thinking?". Although I've noticed only a few female "spitters", but yes, ladies and gentlemen, women also spit outdoors.

I'd say, perhaps there should be a law to forbid spitting in public. First, it's disgusting, second, it lacks respect to others (I even consider it as an indirect insult, be it intentional or not), and third, it's extremely unhealthy.

Imagine how far healthier our world would be if spitting is considered illegal. Can you imagine how potent the saliva is as an agent of contamination? Diseases could spread from it!

Amazingly, them people seemed to be in ease when they spit. Even more like a reflex action.

I hope one day, people could be sued for spitting in public, for committing the act of endangering other people's lives. I mean, if they could ban smoking in public, why not ban spitting in public.

Thank God Mr. Monk doesn't live in this city. He would've died of paranoia. Speaking of Mr. Monk, it is unfortunate that, just like CSI: Miami, the series seemed to be losing its charm. I'm watching the fourth season now, and I couldn't feel the same enthusiasm that I felt when watching the first and second seasons. The show is hardly funny anymore.

I watched A Fish Called Wanda the other day, but somehow failed to spend my time laughing at it. Weird, eh? Despite the praises from critics about the movie, I felt that the only hilarious moments were the ones when Ken tried to kill the old lady. The first time he tried, he killed lady's first terrier. The second time he tried, he turned out to be flattening the lady's second terrier (literally!), and the third time he tried, he crushed the third and the last dog which, eventually sent the old lady into a heart attack and died. To me the funny thing was that Ken was an animal-lover!

Well, anyway, that's all for now. See you all later.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Out of the conundrum

It's been a week, perhaps, since my last post. I've been rather lazy though, to write anything. Fortunately, I'm out of the conundrum now.

Anyway, been watching some movies. Now that I've done watching Jeeves & Wooster, I've spent the week watching the fifth season of CSI: Miami. I could not help to think that the series had actually lost its charm. As a matter of fact, I already felt that since the third season, I guess.

The bad guys were always easy to fold, the tragedies which struck the team seemed to be too easily forgotten, and that Horatio seemed to be too invincible to beat. The first episode of the fifth was even absurd, in my opinion. How could two Americans kicked asses in Rio without any local police doing anything? Obviously, CSI: Miami has turned closer and closer to a set of fairy tales. Personally, I think the CSI (the Vegas one) series would trump Miami totally. I surely hope the sixth season will be able to resurrect its charm again.

I watched the Flags of our Fathers, too this week. Got to buy the movie twice. The first one was scratched so it couldn't be played. Overall, it was quite an interesting movie. Yet more interesting was the fact that Clint Eastwood also made Letters from Iwo Jima which had the same timeline, same background (same war), just different in perspective. Flags saw the war from the American side, while Letters saw it from the Japanese.

I think Letters was better than Flags. Anyway, after watching them, every character could be regarded as “the good guy”. Perhaps, there were supposed to be no bad guys after all in a war. Every soldier just want to survive the war and go home. Who wants to get killed anyway? After all, it could be said that the purpose of every human in life is simply to live, to survive life. Nobody with a sane mind would say “I want to meet my maker, NOW!”.

Well, I guess that's all for now. I'm saving some thoughts for the next post.



Sunday, July 15, 2007

What ho, Venus!

It’s been a hot day today. I spent most of my time in my room, as usual, playing games and watching movies. I went out to the barber, as planned, though.

I watched Venus this evening. I’d say it was a good movie. Well played, and nicely scripted. I wonder why Peter O’Toole failed to snatched the Oscar. Well, I guess Forrest played slightly better. The film might make you pondering how you’re going to be when you’re old. I’d be looking back to my life surely, wondering if I’ve lived a good life, or if I’ve screwed it up to the last bit. I hope I wouldn’t screw it up. I’ve tried to live my life happily and, despite sh*t happened in the process, well, that’s what life supposed to be, right? It’s full of happy moments, sh*t and surprises.

I believe that there are plenty of people out there who feel the same thing as the characters Maurice and Ian. At the dawn of their lives, some become worried about what lies waiting for them beyond death, some become suddenly religious (if they weren’t religious enough beforehand), some just trying to spend the remainder of their lives having fun while they can. That’s what I saw in the movie, people contemplating the final moments of their lives. There were some good bits of humor in it too.

Speaking of humor, I’ve reached the middle of the fourth series of Jeeves & Wooster. I figured that I’d be completed by tomorrow. The fourth installment was nearly as good as the third, although I still favored the third. Still full of ‘Bertie’s dodging the bullet named marriage’, however.

Anyway, it’s time for me to sleep. I’ve got a handful of things to do tomorrow.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Doldrums

Well, it’s been an uneventful day today. Went shopping for some snacks and fruit, visited the DVD counter looking for new, interesting movies, but bought nothing in the end. I’ve been pondering at the idea of watching Naruto and Smallville, but I guess they could wait for a little while longer because I’ve still got a stack of movies not yet seen.

I canceled my plan to have a hair cut today, because when I arrived at the barber shop, both were out for lunch. Besides, there were a lot of people queuing, too. I didn’t want to waste my time waiting there, so I decided to go back.

The entire day was spent watching Jeeves & Wooster episodes from the third series and playing Marvel Trading Card game. I’d say that that game relies heavily on luck. Forget about skill. If you have a bad draw, defeat is almost a certainty. It’s not a great game, although it kept my brain ticking. The graphics were poor. I was expecting Jim Lee’s style of drawing, but instead it was someone else’s. I don’t know who drew the strips, but they were definitely disappointing. Moreover, instead of providing the gamer with crisp cut-scenes (a la Warcraft), what I’ve got were comic strips, zoomed in and out. Pretty lame, I’d say.

Nevertheless, at least the third series of Jeeves & Wooster were not disappointing. Actually, they were great. I haven’t watched the fourth series, but up till now, the third series ranked as the best among the first three series. The third ones made me laugh more frequently than the first two. I’ve also noticed that several episodes showed that Jeeves’ ploys went sour, although he, as usual, managed to save the day.

After somewhat ridiculing ultra nationalism in the second installment, the subject of communism was included in the final episode of the third series. Luckily, it was a British film. Had it been an Indonesian film, the movie would be banned. Well, just in case you haven’t known, most of the people here in my country are allergic to that subject. They could easily run riot because of it.

It’s late now, and I don’t know what else to do. I can play Sid Meier’s Railroads!, but I kinda bored with it. I’ve somewhat bored with Sim Golf, too (it’s kinda awkward that a tournament could last more than a year in terms of the game time). Then, there’s Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossover, but both are antique games, of which graphic qualities are still “less developed”. The only option left is to just sleep after this.

Let’s see, what I can do tomorrow… Well, I might watch Venus and the fourth installment of Jeeves & Wooster; and surely I need to go to the barber. Resuming my Marvel game would be another choice to take.

Okay then, see you all tomorrow.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Wooster, the 'Idle Rich'

Laurie's character in Jeeves & Wooster was actually far more intelligent than the Prince Regent and Lt. George. However, despite this fact, he was definitely outsmarted by Jeeves (played by Laurie's long-time friend Stephen Fry). Wooster, or Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster, was a rich but jobless aristocrat. He frequently got himself into troubles in which he usually managed to escape from only because Jeeves came to the rescue.

Although I haven't finished watching all episodes of Jeeves & Wooster, I believe it's a fascinating series. Again, Wooster's character was a complete opposite to House whereas Wooster was a more polite and, unfortunately, more stupid, yet more jolly than House.

I still haven't got the chance to read the book version of Jeeves & Wooster, but maybe when I'm in the mood, I'll have a look at those books. P.G. Wodehouse wrote the books, by the way.

Another interesting series that I'm planning to watch is A Bit of Fry & Laurie. I've watched only one episode, but I haven't got all of the complete series. Hopefully, I'll have them soon.

I guess that's all about Laurie. Let's move on to other subjects.

House Rules!

During the my blogging hiatus period I've decided to buy House M.D., a TV series about medical stuffs (bootlegged, of course!). I'm not actually interested on the world of doctors and those medical stuffs (reminds me of ER, which for me, was absolutely boring). House, on the other hand, is more interesting. Especially House's character himself.

Apparently, he's (I think) a broken man. Perhaps because he was crippled by a disease (I forgot what disease), which led to the separation between him and his wife. Still, fortunately, his brain stayed sharp. I consider him as the Sherlock Holmes of the medical world, because he seemed to be using similar methods to those of Holmes' in diagnosing his patients.

If you read the article about House at Wikipedia.org, there are some similarities between House and Holmes listed there. What made me interested on the series was his view towards the world and God. Maybe I'll post more about this later on.

Remarkably, while House is defined as a rude and serious character, Hugh Laurie (who performed the role), was more of a comedian. I've watched some other series in which he starred in, such as Blackadder, Jeeves & Wooster, and A Bit of Fry & Laurie.

In Blackadder the Third, Laurie played as George, the idiot Prince Regent; while in Blackadder Goes Fourth, he starred as Lieutenant The Honourable George Colthurst St. Bartleigh MC. I don't want to re-write the whole text from Wikipedia about all this, but if you're interested, you can visit www.wikipedia.org for more information about this character. Click here.

Laurie returned to play again in two more Blackadder movies: the Christmas Carol and Blackadder: Back and Forth.

I'll write a bit about his role in Jeeves & Wooster in the next post.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Resurrected!

After being absent for a long, long time, finally I'm back on blogging. Actually, I thought I've lost my blogs because somehow I didn't update them for a long time.

It's been months since my last post, and there have been lots of things happening in between, new thoughts about things I've felt, seen, and heard. I hope I'll be posting more frequent in the future. Starting from today.

Well, here we go again...