Jetlag and movie fail
I went to bed at 2 am last night and I was real excited to have my sleep schedule back on track until I woke up at 4 pm today.
I get to bed at 11 or so and then wake up at 3 am and can't get back to sleep until 8 am. Dad called me to tell me that I was supposed to start work on Friday, and it was the equivalent of waking me up at midnight and making me work until 6 am. I was going to renew my driver's license today, but clearly the DMV is closed by now. I never know what time it is and I only feel like eating at weird times.
The sun starts to set at, like, 9:30 here. In AU it sets and IS DARK by 6.
I DON'T KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS AND I SLEEP ALL THE TIME COME GET ME.
Just like the last two summers, mom's gas has been shut off and we don't have hot water or a stove/oven. We have to go over to dad's for showers and if I want to bake anything. Of course, dad's kitchen is a mess and mom is the only one who buys flour and that kind of thing, so to do any baking I have to gather up the ingredients and take them to dad's, then take them back. (We don't trust a lot of things to stay in dad's kitchen.) Also dad's oven doesn't have a knob, so you have to guess where the temperature you want is. 350 is the easiest to find.
BUT we're mostly staying at mom's because she's home all the time and dad is working all the time, so breakfast means things that can be toasted or microwaved. Of course, breakfast is also at 4 pm. Also showering becomes REALLY inconvenient.
OMG I went to Walmart with dad... Rum is still, like, $10 a bottle! You can buy whole PACKS of candy bars for $1! (on sale, but...) CHEAP AU rum is $36. Single candy bars ON SALE are $1.50. I LOVE AMERICA!
According to my mom, my little brother (who's 18) hates me, thinks I'm a bad person, and wishes I wouldn't come home. Thanks, Jake. Thanks, mom. That's ok, his eyes are worse than mine, so he wouldn't be much use anyway.
Dad and I went out for my birthday dinner last night, and then mom made a cake (almond w/ raspberry whipped cream), and that was all good.
My plants are really big... Junior Plant has gotten huge since I've been gone! Frankenplant got transferred and lost a few fronds, but he's still taller than me. Ukki-kun Jr the third (the spiderplant) has multiple babies that mom's growing.
Well, because despite what my brother thinks I occasionally care about society, I thought I would remind everybody to boycott The Last Airbender. I know I'm a little late to the Social Justice Party, but to be fair I had resisted watching A:TLA for the same reason I don't watch One Piece or Bleach- they're really complex and a lot of the part of my brain dedicated to cartoons is occupied with Naruto, so I've pretty much ignored the movie. (I tried to watch A:TLA when I started reading about the casting thing, because it sounds pretty good, actually, but Netflix doesn't have it on instant queue anymore. Later.)
For the two of you who haven't heard, our good friends at Paramount watched the A:TLA cartoon series and decided that its carefully-crafted and elaborate fantasy world of Asian and Pacific Rim cultures would be best populated with white heros (and some unspecific-Asian scenery extras). When people got angry, they recast ONE lead as the kid from Slumdog Millionaire. ONE. (Zuko? Is that his name? I've never seen this show.)
Anyway, Possibly-Named-Zuko is a villain in the movie... actually, apparently all the villains are actors of color, so the plot of the movie as-cast is "white kids save their country from the evil aggressive vaguely-Asian country."
This kind of thing has been happening in Hollywood since the dawn of movies. Movie studios are convinced that white people won't watch a movie with non-white leads. (Paramount calls you a racist douchebag, so you're going to give them money?)
What bothers me the most about the whole thing is that fantasy (my very favorite genre) is becoming more and more mainstream, and I'm happy about that, but the fantasy worlds you see in movies are whites-only. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter,The Chronicles of Narnia, The Golden Compass... it's sad when Twilight is the most ethnically-diverse fantasy movie in theaters. (To be fair, Hogwarts is a relatively-diverse place, but the leads are all white.) Being able to watch a fantasy movie and say "I could be there saving the world" is a privilege, and that's sad. (This article by a schoolteacher on self-inserts, sent to me by Alisa, makes the point and is just interesting for fandom-goers in general.)
The Last Airbender was so popular and so groundbreaking because it was a mainstream media fantasy world based on something besides a European culture, and with OBVIOUSLY Asian and Inuit leads. The movie was a chance to have an Asian kid save the world for once, and Paramount has decided for us that we can't handle that.
The official Racebending site.
-People who signed the petition (this is my favorite article there.)
-M Night Shyamalan is a douche, but we already knew that.
A beautifully-written LJ on why this is important.
A much shorter LJ about watching the movie without supporting Paramount.
(In case the past 4 paragraphs and link collection somehow didn't clue you in, this whole thing pisses me off. I'm updating Mrs Sakura before the movie is released just to tell my readers not to watch the movie. Those of you who know how much I fucking hate writing Mrs Sakura will understand how important this is for me. I'm considering bribing readers with another update if the movie tanks.)
I get to bed at 11 or so and then wake up at 3 am and can't get back to sleep until 8 am. Dad called me to tell me that I was supposed to start work on Friday, and it was the equivalent of waking me up at midnight and making me work until 6 am. I was going to renew my driver's license today, but clearly the DMV is closed by now. I never know what time it is and I only feel like eating at weird times.
The sun starts to set at, like, 9:30 here. In AU it sets and IS DARK by 6.
I DON'T KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS AND I SLEEP ALL THE TIME COME GET ME.
Just like the last two summers, mom's gas has been shut off and we don't have hot water or a stove/oven. We have to go over to dad's for showers and if I want to bake anything. Of course, dad's kitchen is a mess and mom is the only one who buys flour and that kind of thing, so to do any baking I have to gather up the ingredients and take them to dad's, then take them back. (We don't trust a lot of things to stay in dad's kitchen.) Also dad's oven doesn't have a knob, so you have to guess where the temperature you want is. 350 is the easiest to find.
BUT we're mostly staying at mom's because she's home all the time and dad is working all the time, so breakfast means things that can be toasted or microwaved. Of course, breakfast is also at 4 pm. Also showering becomes REALLY inconvenient.
OMG I went to Walmart with dad... Rum is still, like, $10 a bottle! You can buy whole PACKS of candy bars for $1! (on sale, but...) CHEAP AU rum is $36. Single candy bars ON SALE are $1.50. I LOVE AMERICA!
According to my mom, my little brother (who's 18) hates me, thinks I'm a bad person, and wishes I wouldn't come home. Thanks, Jake. Thanks, mom. That's ok, his eyes are worse than mine, so he wouldn't be much use anyway.
Dad and I went out for my birthday dinner last night, and then mom made a cake (almond w/ raspberry whipped cream), and that was all good.
My plants are really big... Junior Plant has gotten huge since I've been gone! Frankenplant got transferred and lost a few fronds, but he's still taller than me. Ukki-kun Jr the third (the spiderplant) has multiple babies that mom's growing.
Well, because despite what my brother thinks I occasionally care about society, I thought I would remind everybody to boycott The Last Airbender. I know I'm a little late to the Social Justice Party, but to be fair I had resisted watching A:TLA for the same reason I don't watch One Piece or Bleach- they're really complex and a lot of the part of my brain dedicated to cartoons is occupied with Naruto, so I've pretty much ignored the movie. (I tried to watch A:TLA when I started reading about the casting thing, because it sounds pretty good, actually, but Netflix doesn't have it on instant queue anymore. Later.)
For the two of you who haven't heard, our good friends at Paramount watched the A:TLA cartoon series and decided that its carefully-crafted and elaborate fantasy world of Asian and Pacific Rim cultures would be best populated with white heros (and some unspecific-Asian scenery extras). When people got angry, they recast ONE lead as the kid from Slumdog Millionaire. ONE. (Zuko? Is that his name? I've never seen this show.)
Anyway, Possibly-Named-Zuko is a villain in the movie... actually, apparently all the villains are actors of color, so the plot of the movie as-cast is "white kids save their country from the evil aggressive vaguely-Asian country."
This kind of thing has been happening in Hollywood since the dawn of movies. Movie studios are convinced that white people won't watch a movie with non-white leads. (Paramount calls you a racist douchebag, so you're going to give them money?)
What bothers me the most about the whole thing is that fantasy (my very favorite genre) is becoming more and more mainstream, and I'm happy about that, but the fantasy worlds you see in movies are whites-only. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter,The Chronicles of Narnia, The Golden Compass... it's sad when Twilight is the most ethnically-diverse fantasy movie in theaters. (To be fair, Hogwarts is a relatively-diverse place, but the leads are all white.) Being able to watch a fantasy movie and say "I could be there saving the world" is a privilege, and that's sad. (This article by a schoolteacher on self-inserts, sent to me by Alisa, makes the point and is just interesting for fandom-goers in general.)
The Last Airbender was so popular and so groundbreaking because it was a mainstream media fantasy world based on something besides a European culture, and with OBVIOUSLY Asian and Inuit leads. The movie was a chance to have an Asian kid save the world for once, and Paramount has decided for us that we can't handle that.
The official Racebending site.
-People who signed the petition (this is my favorite article there.)
-M Night Shyamalan is a douche, but we already knew that.
A beautifully-written LJ on why this is important.
A much shorter LJ about watching the movie without supporting Paramount.
(In case the past 4 paragraphs and link collection somehow didn't clue you in, this whole thing pisses me off. I'm updating Mrs Sakura before the movie is released just to tell my readers not to watch the movie. Those of you who know how much I fucking hate writing Mrs Sakura will understand how important this is for me. I'm considering bribing readers with another update if the movie tanks.)