(no subject)

LJ is being all weird and slow with returning my comments.

Poetry class was cancelled, so here I am...

I've been slowly going through my Spuffy CDs. I started with savaa's 3 disks, and now I'm on right_as_rain's CD. Which is bitchin cool too. I'd forgotten how much Sarah McLachlan songs work for Spuffy. "Do What You Have To Do" has a lot of significance, after having seen Chosen. Which reminds me... I've been getting Spike!fic thoughts playing about my head again. I'm not sure where it's headed thou--AAAAHKK!!! ::frantically turns down volume::

Jeez. I just went from Fisher's "I Will Love You" to something that's...not. Like really loudly not. Not that the new one isn't a good song, but transition, transition!

-- Anyway, I think fic thoughts are good. I didn't do enough of that last year. Whatever kept me from wanting to really write any Buffy fic last year is apparently not going to be an issue for this season of Angel. I don't know if that speaks better or worse of the first two episodes of AtS, but I can't find a reason why it would be either.


EDIT: Oh my, Lifehouse's "Breathing" is on here. I *love* that song for Spuffy!

(no subject)

mrthursday says it's National Poetry Day, and thenyxie believes him.

Well, who am I to argue with that? I can celebrate the UK's national poetry day. I'll say it's a cultural ancestry thing.


I'm also choosing a poem by William Blake. This is a good Spuffy poem, I think. In as much as any poem can be Spuffy that wasn't written for them. In case you all haven't noticed, I'm on a Spuffy high today. A big one.

The Clod & the Pebble

Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.

So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet;
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet:

Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to Its delight:
Joys in anothers loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.


That is one of my all-time favorite poems. I love the skillful reversal of the language. And hell, the statments about love are darned good too.

addict

You know LJ has become a part of your life when every time something cool or wrong or funny or sad or evil or wonderful or icky or thought-provoking or weird or plain boring happens to you, all you can think about is finding the nearest computer and marking down your life.

This happens to me an average of 6 or 7 times a day. I usually get around to doing it about 2-4 times a day.

(no subject)

I'm watching Pleasantville on TNT right now. Has anyone made any Pleasantville icons?

I really adored this film. It's a piece of art, and even better, a subversive piece of art. It's art that's about the beauty and joy of art itself-- more primarily, it uses art to show us directly and subtly the passions that inspire people to make art, whether your art is sex or sport or paint or literature or masturbation or anger or romantic love. It's critical of religious extremitism at the expense of life passions-- the character that represents God is a fumbling, well-intentioned and cheerful but easily frustrated old man who gets upset when he can't control events that he set in motion (he's also very adept at using a pen to chart exact moments of sinning caught on divine tv ::snicker::). Also critical of totalitarianism, stagnancy, communism, and basically any restrictions of free thought or freedom of experience.

What do I love about this film? (besides the above)

-the photgraphy and use of color design, both symbolically AND visually.

-the humor in the script

-way that the love triangle between the wife, the husband, and the owner of the diner ISN'T neatly resolved, and is treated with care

-the way that the 'negative' emotions like anger are presented as positive because they are life-changing too.

-the way that the two main "real" kids don't change for the same reasons as the rest of the town, because their lessons are different.

-bringing in the idea of race in an all-white town and film, through the term "colored," though it doesn't mean what it does in the real world sense.

-David/Bud changes out of anger, the same as the Mayor. Bud wanted the security of Pleasantville in the beginning, and the Mayor wanted to preserve that security in the end. Anger changed David/Bud into color, and he used that experience to get the Mayor to change for the same reason.

-the way that the women of the film drive the sexual freedom, and as a result the other freedoms as well. Starting from Jennifer/Mary Sue, and then moving onto her "mother" Betty, and then even to David/Bud's girlfriend, who literally offers him a bright shining red apple off the tree. Even later, the mother Betty acts as a truth-sayer of sorts, using her hand mirror to show Bud and then the mayor how they have changed.

-the apple thing is one of my favorite parts of the movie. Because this movie is all about the idea that looking beyond paradise, and searching for knowledge and experience is not a sin, in fact it's the best thing you can do, the thing that beings with free will should do. Change. Grow. Live. Here's a reversal of the religious allegory, where the woman is celebrated for giving wisdom to the men in the series, not cursed for it and blamed for "the original sin." In this, the original sin, eating from the tree of knowledge and then sharing that knowledge, is the presented not as a curse, but as enlightenment.

Obviously, a very Western-philosophy idea of freedom of thought and natural rights, and the celebration of diversity and progress. But hey, that's the kind of cultural philosophy I ascribe to.

Also, it had both Riley and Johnathon in small parts in the film! From BTVS, yo. And Jonathon (Danny something-or-other) had more lines than Riley (Marc Blucas, who didn't have any.)