Plenty of stuff to cover today [in fact yesterday for I wrote most of this then but I only had time to update the odd habits meme after the blog was up again].

What’s with the lack of updates?

Yeah, I know. The kinkyness test has been sitting there, pathetically, for some days already. Never leave a test result as the latest entry, they say. But I’ve got plenty of excuses!

First of all, the flu. I was pre-fluish from Xmas to midway the following week. Fluish from there for two sick leave days, two weekend days including New Year and a winter holiday Monday. Then came three days of being tired at work, Twelfth Day holiday, two weekend days and a full week of sick leave and (from Wed) antibiotics due to post-flu sinusitis. Thanks a bunch, world.

This week I’ve been at work and relatively healthy, although on Mon and Tue I was too busy and too tired to blog much.

And now [on Thu] Blogsome is down (yes, I’m writing this in TextPad to be updated into the blog later — don’t want to let the inspiration go to waste) due to a server swap. Has been since yesterday [Wed].

Well, have you seen any movies lately?

So glad you asked. Dugi and I went to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe sometime back. Now, of the books this is my least favourite because storywise it’s quite simple fairy tale and I’ve read it most often of the seven. This said, I enjoyed the film very much. I’m sure you’ve all heard the praise for Jadis, Tumnus and the impressive CGI animals, so I won’t have to bore you with details. Beforehand I was most worried about the big battle but I ended up loving it and especially the centaur general Oreius.

I also want to point out the mermaids beneath Cair Paravel, for there was something very Narnia about them. And I do mean the Narnia where I spent many of my childhood evenings. Seeing them cracked something in me and for a moment I thought I just might spend the rest of the night crying because of the magic. (I didn’t, though.) Apart from that moment when the enchantment pierced my adult defences, the best thing about the film was the potential it promised regarding the possible sequels. I so want to see Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair visualised like this!

Wow, some experience… anything good on tv?

Sure, Dugi and I just watched all of Babylon 5 season 1. And I got a replace box from Amazon.de with the fixed disc 2. Unfortunately they sent the whole box and I’ll have to send them back the box I got previously, but at least I’ve got the whole set without any aspect ratio glitches now.

I got Dugi to admit B5’s goodness (he was like “this is pretty Trek-like” in the beginning O.o) and now he’s as eager as I to get season 2. Haven’t gotten around to ordering it yet but did order X-Files season 1 from Play sale since it was so cheap and there’s something adorable about those early episodes.

Other than that we’ve been watching Farscape (nearing the series ending…), Desperate Housewives and Veronica Mars from tape or tv. Looking forward to Battlestar Galactica and Lost that start showing in Finland very soon ^_^

So glad I asked.
…
Umh, how’s it with music?

Why, I just popped into the record store [the day before] yesterday and got Get Behind Me Satan by The White Stripes, Melody A.M. by Röyksopp and Mesmerize by System of a Down. Great albums, all of them! Especially Mesmerize. Man, pure genius.

Hang on, aren’t you boycotting Sony CDs?

Oh, you noticed. O.o D’oh. Well, to be precise, I was campaigning for “No Xmas for SONY” and it’s past December now. Plus Mesmerize was on sale and I only paid around 10 euros for it — a price very different from the one I decided not to pay as testified in Boikotti.org. (By the way, the CD is not broken — “copy-protected” — as many claim there [and Hypnotize isn’t either].) Sure, the excuses are somewhat lame. Hey, it upsets me, too (although surely not as much as Merten, sorry for lack of support my hc friend). If it was something else than this brilliant music I would have passed.

[Also got System of a Down’s Hypnotize yesterday. Not as cheap as the other album but still 6 euros cheaper than when I didn’t buy it. And yes, I do realise the cheapness is probably mostly away from the retail, not from SONY so much.]

In any case there’s one thing I’m not budging with. I ain’t buying no broken CDs. The Finnish band Stella’s Kuuntelija I actually went to the store for turned out to be one of those. Another recent disappointment was the soundtrack for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, both the regular and the special edition versions O.o. I wonder if the US version is broken, too? Man this sucks.

Don’t start crying, now. Any positive stuff going on lately? Like… good comics?

Yeah! The latest issue of Ryhmä-X (that’s X-Men in Finnish) was a great surprise! Reading Astonishing X-Men written by Joss Whedon and drawn by John Cassaday, both extremely talented fellows, was a very positice experience. I love Cassaday’s art that returned the X-people from pinups to actual (heroic) characters. The same can be said about Whedon’s script. For a change we see conversations, expressions, thoughts and feelings instead of the constant, empty action. So I love the soap. That’s what it used to be all about! You know, when X-Men was still good and enthralling.

Since this was only the first part of a long arch I can’t say much about the story. Except that it still has every chance to be good. As for everything else, here are the highlights. Emma Frost. Wow. I used to hate her but here she comes off as she should be: an intelligent, highly skilled woman with a personality, who is valid as a gorgeous, cold vamp. As for my other least favourite characters, even Scott manages to look good. Not sure how I feel about the return of the Kitty yet, but it’s really nice to have that essential part of X-Men, a character with non-lethal powers, back. I don’t mind action but if there’s no drama to support it, it’s just boring.

This is so looking good and I’m actually glad I recently decided to renew my subscription despite my doubts (I didn’t know Astonishing was coming up — in fact I didnt know about Astonishing at all — bad fangirl me). I’m also contemplating getting the Astonishing X-Men collection Vol. 1 from Amazon.

Anything else you’d like to tell me?

Just this. It’s bloody freezing outside. -22°C! [today, too!] And since this is Tampere we’re talking about, big chunks of Finland have it even colder right now. Brrrh. I feel for the poor sods in Russia, too, with -50°C in some places O.o

The good thing is that germs don’t like the cold. The bad thing is that an army of them has a nice, warm nest within me. My throat is still sore [although not as bad today as it was yesterday; might I actually be getting well?].