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Movie Quotes Meme

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Grabbed this meme from a variety of places, including X-Tra Rant, Torpor Indy, Radical Druid, Legal Quandary, etc.
Here are the rules:
A. Pick 11 of your favorite movies.
B. Then pick one of your favorite quotes from each movie.
C. Post the quotes in your journal.
D. Have those on your friends list guess what the movie is.
E. Either strike out the quote once it has been correctly identified or place the guesser’s user name directly after the quote.
F. Extra points for knowing the actor or character’s name.

1. “I just love books. They’re so decorative.”
(Auntie Mame. Rachel got the movie, but no extra points.)
2. It’s just, when you buy furniture, you tell yourself, that’s it. That’s the last sofa I’m gonna need. Whatever else happens, I’ve got that sofa problem handled.
(Fight Club, Narrator/Edward Norton. Dustin, +1)
3. It should take you exactly four seconds to cross from here to that door. I’ll give you two.
(Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Holly Golightly/Audrey Hepburn. Torpor Indy, +1)
4. You know how someone’s appearance can change the longer you know them? How a really attractive person, if you don’t like them, can become more and more ugly; whereas someone you might not have even have noticed… that you wouldn’t look at more than once, if you love them, can become the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. All you want to do is be near them.
(The Truth About Cats and Dogs, Brian/Ben Chaplin. Lori, +1. )
5. We’ve become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change. Yes sir. How’s that for a bit of homespun philosophy?
(Rear Window, Stella/Thelma Ritter. No one got this.)
6. I don’t like Visigoths. Tomorrow, we’ll get sign: “No Spiders or Visigoths Allowed.”
(Life is Beautiful, Guido Orefice/Roberto Benigni. No one got this.)
7. When a woman’s got a husband, and you’ve got none, why should she take advice from you? Even if you can quote Balzac and Shakespeare and all them other high-falutin’ Greeks.
(The Music Man, Mrs. Paroo/Pert Kelton. Kellie, +1)
8. Up until now everything around here has been, well, pleasant. Recently certain things have become unpleasant. Now, it seems to me that the first thing we have to do is to separate out the things that are pleasant from the things that are unpleasant.
(Pleasantville, Big Bob/J.T. Walsh. Jason +1.)
9. I have reached the end of your book and… there are so many things that I need to ask you. Sometimes I’m afraid of what you might tell me. Sometimes I’m afraid that you’ll tell me that this is not a work of fiction. I can only hope that the answers will come to me in my sleep. I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to.
(Donnie Darko, Donnie/Jake Gyllenhaal. Stallio!, +1)
10. All these neat, little houses and all these nice, little streets… It’s hard to believe that something’s wrong with some of those little houses.
(All the President’s Men, Carl Bernstein, Dustin Hoffman. Dustin, +1)
11. I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with! (This ones a gimme, because I’m nice like that.)
(The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy/Judy Garland. Rachel +1)

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A year of reading Proust

Next year, I’m going to read Proust. I’m going to tackle In Search of Lost Time (AKA Remembrance of Things Past, or more precisely “À la recherche du temps perdu”), from beginning to end.

I say next year because I’m still working my way though this year’s reading plans. I’m made some progress, especially when I was stressed out, since I tend to read more as a coping mechanism.

I have strayed pretty far and wide from the list though. Although I planned not to buy any books, I have picked up a few things here and there. And I just put a bunch of books on hold at the library. And then there’s Stephanie’s library, currently being unpacked and placed on shelves in our new home, which opens a whole new world of reading options for me.

But I really want to read Proust. I’ve read a few reviews from people who’ve tackled the seven-volume set, and they are glowing — according to some people, Proust Can Change Your Life. Even if you don’t buy that, some people maintain that Proust’s book changed Paris. Dan Ford, one of many prolific Amazon reviewers, has an entire site about his project of Reading Proust including recommendations of the best translations to get – he recommends the more recent Penguin translations, published in the U.S. by Viking.

Either way, it sounds like a challenge I’d like to tackle.

Right after I finish this other challenge that I’m not even halfway through.

Continue ReadingA year of reading Proust

Party Arrival Times

My favorite quote from the comments on this discussion about what is the optimal time to arrive at a party:

This only works if all guests judge by the same criteria. They do not. In many circles, late arrivers are seen as lazy, irreponsible, disorganized, rude, or to posers or strivers who try to cram as many parties as possible into a single evening.

Hee. I usually try to arrive as early as I can, but not so early that I’m in the hosts’ way while they prepare. If I know the host well, I’ll ask if they need prep help and show up when they need it, so they can have everything ready and be able to have fun and socialize at their own event instead of having to worry constantly about running it.

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Hell, Michigan

Apparently Hell, Michigan is going to have fun with tomorrow’s date, planning some fun town celebrations, but not all town residents are amused.
Elsewhere, Topor Indy notes a variety of other people’s plans (USA Today article) for the “satanic” holiday that is the day of my birth, the 38th anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s death, and the 62nd anniversary of D-Day, among other events.
Apparently, it’s also National Yo-Yo Day.
The world’s odds of surviving the day: 100,000 to 1, according to an online bookmaker.
No word on what the town of Heck, Michigan feels about all of this.

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Mini Book Reviews

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her
by Melanie Rehak
A great exploration of the history of the popular girl detective novels and the women who wrote them. I learned a couple of surprising things — that Nancy Drew was far and away the most popular of the Stratmeyer Syndicate’s kid book series, blowing away the Hardy Boys by a mile. I was also surprised to learn how much the Syndicate actually contributed to the novels. I was always under the impression that the ghostwriters, like Mildred Wirt Benson, got a raw deal because they wrote all the books but never got credit. But in reality the writing was more of a collaboration between the Syndicate (which was primarily Harriet Stratemeyer Adams) who created all the characters and wrote detailed plots; and the ghostwriters, who filled in the details and dialog. That’s kinda cool — I’m terrible at working out a plot, but I can write great scenes and dialog.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
by Malcolm Gladwell
Re-read this after a quick read last year.

Deception Point
by Dan Brown
A fun mindless thriller that was entertaining and relaxing.

The Time Traveler’s Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
I loved this complex novel about a man with a genetic mutation that causes him to be thrown backward and forward through time. Far from a fun or interesting quirk, his time travel is distressing and difficult — he can’t take anything with him; not even the fillings in his teeth. He can’t control where or when he goes, but shows up at various points in his own life, especially at traumatic events. But he also gets thrown back to visit his future wife when she was a child, beginning a romance that transcends time.

The Seven Daughters of Eve
by Bryan Sykes
A great science novel that’s not too intense or boring. Sykes is a Oxford scholar and human geneticist that has discovered a way to trace, through DNA, our matrilinial ancestry.

What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
by Thomas Frank
I just started this, and it’s shaping up to be an entertaining and interesting read.

Continue ReadingMini Book Reviews

Video Game encouraging killing gay people

A description of the new “Left Behind” video game, based on the series of books, the game will be release in October 0f 2006, just in time for Christmas. The synopsis is from the “Talk to Action” website. The game has been previewed at video game exhibitions.

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission – both a religious mission and a military mission — to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state – especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is “to conduct physical and spiritual warfare”; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

If the purpose of your life is to kill or convert me, you’re in for a very short and unhappy existence, people.

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blaming mathematics for your inability to add

From the crushworthy site NonSequitur:

So while many liberals may perhaps share the satisfaction of having been right about Iraq and Afghanistan from the very beginning, this does not mean (1) that they are gleeful over the damage that has been done to America, and more perniciously, (2) that they brought it about or desired it. The current weakening of America’s standing in the world was one of the arguments against silly saber rattling and thinly justified foreign misadventures, not the desired outcome. Taking them to task for having been right all along, as is the current fashion among those who were wrong all along, is like blaming mathematics for your inability to add.

Continue Readingblaming mathematics for your inability to add