I got nothin' else today, so let's go with this.
Current clothes: Gray sweats, Rush concert t-shirt, black socks.
Current mood: Not bad. Halfway between being happy at how much I've gotten done lately and mildly stressed about how much I haven't gotten done. But I'm leaning slightly more towards the positive, moodwise, I think.
Current music: Norm Sherman by Norm Sherman. Which is... an interesting album. Let me put it this way, I listened to it for the first time immediately after an episode of Welcome to Night Vale, and I'm pretty sure it was the weirder of the two.
Current annoyance: No matter how much time I have, the amount of time necessary to do all the things I need or want to do is always greater.
Current thing: I'm taking a little time off this week, since my schedule easily allows it for once, to try to get caught up on various things I've fallen behind on... Housework, yardwork, etc., etc. And I am making progress, but... Yeah, see "current annoyance."
Current desktop picture: Still the same Doctor Who image. I suppose it may actually be time to change it up soon. Even if it is pretty awesome.
Current book: I just read The Adventures of Tintin: Explorers on the Moon, which a friend lent me, earlier today. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to read next. Something non-fictional.
Current song in head: The "Whalers on the Moon" ditty from the second episode of Futurama. I blame Tintin. Mostly.
Current refreshment: Orange spice tea.
Current DVD in player: Most recently, Spy. Which was cute. Not amazing or anything, but cute, and worth a watch. Also, man, is it nice to see someone who looks like Melissa McCarthy starring in a movie like this. Hollywood generally not only doesn't let us ladies of the rounder persuasion do any ass-kicking (even of the comedic kind), it generally prefers to pretend we don't exist at all.
Current happy thing: Not being at work.
Current thought: We're whalers on the moon! We carry a harpoon!
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A couple of years ago I went through all the Tintin books. They're often really dated -- occasionally in uncomfortably racist ways -- but also surprisingly a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteAgreed on Spy, too. Not brilliant, but great to see McCarthy in the part -- where she also didn't just have to be the foul-mouthed crazy person she's played most recently. I also really loved Jason Statham basically playing a parody of a Jason Statham character.
That one and the Destination Moon, which was basically the first half of the same story, are the only Tintin books I've read. I admit, I couldn't quite see, at first, why they were so popular, but by a little way into the second book, it had really started to win me over. Fortunately. both of those were blessedly fee of uncomfortable 50s racism.
DeleteI haven't actually seem McCarthy in much of anything else -- possibly I am the only person in America who hasn't seen Bridesmaids -- but I really liked her in this one. As well as being funny, she plays a great combination of hyper-competent spy person and fallible, relatable everywoman. You don't see that sort of thing very often, either.
Even the more difficult to find Tintin in the Congo isn't hatefully racist, but yeah, there are some really uncomfortable bits throughout. Also some very endearing ones, though. I particularly liked Snowy and Thompson and Thompson.
DeleteI'm glad to have a copy of ...Congo that hasn't been cleaned up for modern day sensibilities. Even when I prepare myself to read it in terms of 1920's/1930's, Belgian-colonial thinking, I agree that it's uncomfortable for "enlightened" readers.
DeleteCoincidentally, I recently read a short, fiction series (beginning with The Witch Doctor's Wife) about life in the Belgian Congo of the 1950's, shortly before independence. The author, Tamar Myers, is a white American who was raised in the Congo (as it was called then -- and again now). I think she managed to convey the feeling of "this is how the colonists and natives were conditioned to think back then, not the way I think now" which allows the stories to flow naturally yet with regard to our current day, 20/20 hindsight.
I think it's important not to whitewash away the history that kind of thinking, but to acknowledge the fact that it existed and that it continues to have its effect on the present. But it's not necessarily something I want to slam up against while reading a supposedly pleasant escapist kid's story.
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