aprilstarchild: (Rocks Fall! Everyone Dies!)
[personal profile] aprilstarchild
Saw Children of Men tonight. It was very good and quite thought-provoking, but one part amused the shit out of me: It's 2027, and the main character's old hippie dad is listening to....Radiohead. Yes, twenty-five years from now, Radiohead will the the music of old hippies.

I could deal with that.

I have decided that the "shuffle" function on my iPod is the best thing ever. It's my own personal radio station! I need to take the Christmas music off of it, though. It's fantastic--yesterday morning it went from They Might Be Giants to NIN to Charlotte Church to DJ Assault to Johnny Cash to Depeche Mode. Bwah ha ha, beware my playlist. Somehow the subject came up the last time I was at People's, and the cashier said that his iPod and its shuffle function have changed his life. I think I believe him.

I only have 554 songs on it. Must...aquire...more... I should stop by my parents' house soon and grab all my old CDs. All, what, two hundred of them? I also have some here that are burned copies from friends, they're not on there only because I've been too lazy to type in all the track titles. I should do, like, one of them a day or something.

Jarrod and I went to the mall today and among other things, returned the mp3/CD player he bought me for Christmas. Instead we got a gadget that plugs into the outlet of his car and puts the iPod on an FM station while charging the iPod. It was tricky to find a frequency that would work (lots of radio stations around here, arrgh). We made the station we chose a preset, hee hee hee.

Jarrod and I might be overfond of eating mushrooms. I swear mushrooms sneak into half our dinners these days. We went to Uwajimaya's earlier, and bought two kinds of dried mushrooms and one kind fresh, and then I made something resembling chow mein and they all ended up in there. Mmmmm...shiitakes and chanterelles and enoki and black fungus and miatakes, yummy!

Jarrod is the master of the Rubik's cube.

In 25 years

Date: 2007-01-07 08:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 5minutelimit.livejournal.com
In 25 years, YOU will be that old Hippy. You will be me! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! :D

Re: In 25 years

Date: 2007-01-07 09:13 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] aprilstarchild.livejournal.com
I'm already looking forward to it! I'll make a damn good old hippie, I think.

Date: 2007-01-07 09:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] axiom.livejournal.com
[livejournal.com profile] alicia_stardust and I saw Children of Men last night as well, and loved it.

SPOILER ALERT

There were a number of scenes with discussion provoking social commentary, not to mention the black humor which was just priceless. I love movies like that. There was a common element to Children of Men and the Matrix series that I was drawn to. It's interesting to see a creative vision of what humanity would be like when facing a direct and immediate threat of extinction. I think I may read the book now to see if the author gave further detail on how exactly the rest of the world crumbled and the steps that the British took to gain enough control over their populace to retain some semblance of order.

One of the most interesting character motivations for me was the leader of the resistance. He was so caught up in his dream of an uprising, and his desire to strike back at the government. He put doing so at a higher priority than getting the mother and child to a group of scientists to make the most of the opportunity to heal the loss of fertility. From his scenes it looked less like a power struggle and more like a violent and angry reaction to the horrible things the government had done in the name of security.

In retrospect, I loved that while humanity was terminally fucked, the protagonist is first seen getting a cup of coffee. Never mind that humanity will be extinct in 60 years, coffee is still the first order of business in the morning. Some things never change.

Date: 2007-01-07 09:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] aprilstarchild.livejournal.com
What's scary to me about that particular dystopia, is how realistic much of it is. Oy. For instance, you'd think that with humans being an endangered species, that human life would become more sacred, but it hasn't, of course. I'm betting that overpopulation isn't even really a problem anymore, because of the flu epidemic they mention (I've read that that's not how his son dies in the book, so that might be different). So instead of realizing how fragile humans are, and trying to keep as many of them alive and happy as possible so there's a possibility at least of one becoming pregnant; humans are all treated terribly!

Apparently the movie is very different from the book, and in neither do they explain WHY everyone's infertile.

Black humor is one of my favorite kinds, when done well.

Not only do some things never change, *people* never change. The apocalypse could be tomorrow, and I'd want coffee too, dammit. *LOL*

On a totally different subject, did you read most of that ADD book before returning it to me? What did you think of it?
From: [identity profile] axiom.livejournal.com
When talking about human life being sacred, I think it is helpful to discuss the different aspects of human life, instead of the overarching concept. Since fertility was something nobody had, the immense desire to have it didn't reflect on the way human life was treated in general. It had been removed from the equation, in a sense. Separately, being young was outright worshiped at a level that makes today's celebrities look like everyday people.

One reason mothers and the ability to create life is not held in high regard today is because from an economics perspective, it's so cheep. Almost anyone can get pregnant, so the ability to do so doesn't have significant value in it's own right. That said, it takes two people so the even that someone else is either willing to get you pregnant, or let you get them pregnant is not as cheep, so it has more value. Especially if the other person will remain involved in the nurturing of the child.

There was one event in the movie that I can't decide on. When the soldiers stopped fighting to see the baby, then went back to fighting as if the baby never existed. While that does provide interesting commentary on our ability to be distracted by violence in a situation, I can't decide if the psychology fits. Had I been one of the soldiers, after seeing the baby and realizing that someone was putting it in danger, I would have done everything I could to protect it and get it the fuck out of the war zone. Not reacting like that just feels so alien to me that I can't even imagine what would have to be different in my head to cause me to behave differently. I dunno.




I was able to read a significant amount of the book, though I didn't finish it.

I've dealt with the ADD-like symptoms for so long, that I have internal and external coping mechanisms that are well developed. Reading a subjective analysis of what it means to be ADHD and how to cope ended up being fairly frustrated. There were things that I had subconscious coming mechanisms for, so it felt like discussing them couldn't be done in general terms.

Id did get me thinking about a number of things though. I still hope to make progress one of these days when things are not so crazy.

On the plus side, we just found out that our Dr. is moving back to Canada, so I have a legitimate excuse to go to a new one and hopefully get a better answer about the meds.

Any suggestions?
From: [identity profile] aprilstarchild.livejournal.com
That scene kinda bugged me too....I was like, WTF?

Things, in some sense, will *always* be crazy. You should know that now. *lol*

The doctor I liked was Dr. Harold Barry. I think he's at Sunset Family Practice or something like that now.

Your coping mechanisms must be scads better than mine...but something that pops up in that particular book, over and over, is how extremely important it is to find the right spouse--it changes everything. On that score, please keep in mind, I think you won the goddamn lottery. *lol*

Profile

aprilstarchild: (Default)
aprilstarchild

August 2018

S M T W T F S
   1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122 232425
262728293031 

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 19th, 2025 05:19 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios