Unfortunate patron name of the day: Wanting Wang.

Dude. I forgot to mention two posts back that I also learned to drive! Probably the key achievement of the last two years...

My three-sentence review of Godard's Le Mepris/Contempt, as given to Lawrence this morning:

'I hate you! You're not a real man! Here's my butt.'

(I'm sure it was meant to be telling us very meaningful things about the nature of film and society and America and Europe and Odysseus and Penelope and husbands and wives... lots of dichotomous pairs... and instead all I could think about was Brigitte Bardot's butt, which was practically its own character. My lord that was a nice ass.)

It occurred to me the other day that over the last few years I have learned quite a lot of new things, without all that pesky PhDism hanging over my head. I have learned to knit. (Sort of. In fact, with autumn starting I should really finish the pending projects.) I have learned Maori (again, sort of. Rudimentarily. Enough so that Korero Mai on Maori TV is a not totally incomprehensible experience). I have taken two classes on editing, proofreading, InDesign, and general book layouty things like kerning and the appropriateness of serifed fonts. (Woo!) I have refined some of my cooking techniques to include Mexican foods (necessity, the mother of invention). And here's my latest project:

The ukulele!

I bought it for sixteen dollars on Trade Me. I am totally in love with my ukulele! And thanks to the wonderment of teh internets, I am able to learn chords for the most incongruous of songs!

File this under things that everyone else noticed years ago because they are in the epicentre of popular culture and actually watched it when it first came out, but that I must mention now because I only just saw it on DVD and thought it was cool. (Give me a break, I'm in New Zealand.) In the episode of Arrested Development called 'The One Where They Build a House', they exactly re-create that incredible stunt Buster Keaton does in one of his movies, where the front wall of a house falls down on him and he ends up going through the front door. And which Bluth character took part in the re-created stunt? Why, Buster, of course.

Patron name of the day: Xavier Mercedes Lillian Black.

Hi, I'm Danielle. You may remember me from such blogs as Shake That Cola Drag and The Wee Hoosie. Some months ago, I was waiting for the council to sign off on our house. I was also pretty furious about the Katrina thing. It's now March. I'm still waiting for the council to sign off on our house, and I'm still pretty furious about the Katrina thing. So, yeah. What's up with you?

Note: the Arctic Monkeys are good, but they are not as good as everyone seems to think they are.
Note 2: the Flaming Lips documentary The Fearless Freaks is well worth watching.