[Movie Review] The X-Files: I Want to Believe

Let me say at the outset: No, it wasn’t better than The Dark Knight.

But, as a self-confessed X-Phile (I adimitted to The Boyfriend last night that when I was 15 I used to have a fansite — on Geocities… ah the memories!!) … I FRICKING LOVED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh Chris Charter, what a champ. This movie, as I mentioned in my tweet on the way out of the cinema, was gratuitous, self-indulgent fluff.  I am pretty sure if he wasn’t CHRIS CARTER and didn’t have his own production company, no dope in Hollywood would touch the script… but he made the movie for himself and like-minded fans, and for that I salute him 🙂

Teehee what jolly good fun!!

The Boyfriend says I owe him big-time for making him sit there (“That is two hours of my life I will never get back”, et cetera) but I submit that I totally said he didn’t have to see it with me since he had no idea what was going on.

Sqeeee! LOVED IT!

That is all 🙂

on writing

Just another quick post today; I just wanted to mention something.

It’s about writing style. I read this interesting piece on the topic a couple of weeks ago and it got me a’pondering about writing, or, more specifically, about how I write (because, as you must know by now, everything is always about me).

One of the 7 tips from the article is “sound like yourself”.

Annie has often said that she likes my writing because it sounds just like I talk, which I take as one of the loveliest compliments ever,

Then one of the tumblrers I follow quoted a following paragraph from weblebrity Julia Allison’s most recent column that got me thinking about a terrible habit I know I’ve do when I write.  The bit she’d “plucked … at random to say that punctuation like this boggles my mind” was this:

The good news (for you!): The creation of online systems of transmission (MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia), with their myriad channels for exposure—and resulting adoption and mutations—has exponentially sped up meme transmissions.

I know I’ve got a bit of a penchant for the odd aside, or 3, in the process of trying to make a point about something, but I hope I don’t do it as horribly as that.

So that’s all. I just wanted to write a bit about writing.  Which is really what this blog is for, I guess.

What sort of bad writing habits do you have? And/or what bugs you?

Why WA media sucks reason #8,530,269

Ok super quick rant but this just cannot go without mention.

We all know Teh West is the torchbearer for shit, sensationalist journalism, but TWAT “Chief Of Staff” Liam Phillips seems to have decided to step up to make a challenge to that title. Maybe it’s all the post-Tour de France, pre-Olympic competitive spirit coming out.

Young Phillips has posted a gem of a “opinion” piece highlighting the ignorance and just unbelievabe stupidness that makes this charming state well-known for being red-neck hicks who just love spouting their visceral knee-jerk affrontedness at the drop of a hat. (Lots of adjectives = Sunili is pissed off.)

On the coronial inquest into the suicide of Simon Rochford, the prisoner who topped himself after it was revealed he was the suspect in a 1994 murder (for which Andrew Mallard was wrongfully convicted and jailed), Phillips essentially wonders why we should cry for Rochford, when, frankly, he was just a roach:

… the most surprising aspect of the inquest’s coverage is the victimised way in which Rochford has often been presented.

Sure he committed suicide – a sad act. But let’s not forget, this man was no altar boy. He was a convicted killer serving a life jail term for the brutal murder of his girlfriend Brigitta Dickens in July 1994.

He became involved in the Pamela Lawrence case because he was suspected of bludgeoning her to death – a reasonable assumption, you would think, given his track record.

Uuuuuhhhh. Gee, well, um, I only did a law degree and now work at the Court and stuff, but I have a strange feeling that you’re not really supposed to make “reasonable assumptions” based on prior convictions, unless it’s in a very narrow set of circumstances. Or something. Heck, correct me if I’m wrong, eh?

See also:

For me, it’s all a bit of a moot point anyway. The ultimate aim of this exercise is to establish who killed Pamela Lawrence.

And committing suicide the day you have been named as a suspect is not the typical action of an innocent man.

Not only is that just totally effing offensive to anyone who knows the slightest thing about the principles of criminal justice (establishing who killed her kinda needs a trial and stuff, which we can’t have since the guy’s dead, but hey, I could be wrong again) … I have a feeling it takes the vitriole of “law and order” ranting in this state down to new lows.

Or maybe I’m just lucky to not have read anything worse in recent memory.

But what’s worse besides, that’s just the kinda moron attitude that gets the wrong person locked up for 12 years, isn’t it?

Twat.

I bloody hope my idol Patti Chong has a go at this knob on Thursday.

PS: Today’s iGoogle quote of the day is amusingly appropriate:

People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.
– AJ Liebling

I cannot believe these douchebags get away with publishing and justifying it as “opinion”.  How the hell do people get these gigs? Why are they not made to write “I will not tell lies” on the back of their hands with magical mean-quills? Fucktards. Sorry. This really irks me.

The 4-Hour Work Week?

When I entered the title right up there I typo-ed “The 40Hour Work Week”. That’s a Freudian slip and a half if you ever saw one.

So I have decided to do away with all the whinging and whining I have included in this blog recently and have thereby resolved to get up off my butt and start doing something to fix it.

I have had this wishy-washy goal nestled in the back of my mind all year and the other day, when I took a mental health day, I plugged in my mobem and did a bit of research. I figured out exactly what it was that I wanted to do.  I crystallised the goal and I am actually able to start making steps to get there.  When it was just this vague idea I didn’t do anything about it because, frankly, I couldn’t.  Now I have little steps that I can do like items on a to-do list. Nice.

And then today I got a call from a friend who said she knows these people looking for a particular sort of person and I totally fit the bill and she recommended me would it be ok for her to give them my number. And these people are people I have really, really been interested in working for.

So… wow.

I bother to flap my butterfly wings and look what happens.

Also. I took a walk up to Borders and used their weekly Shortlist voucher to pick up The 4-Hour Work Week.

I have a confession to make (and Skink’s probably gonna leave an abusive — yet witty and amusing — comment about it).

I have a thing for self-help books.

I have only ever ACTUALLY read one, a long time ago, but it was good and helpful and I learned lots and I’ve bought like a couple over the last year or so.  I could say it was in the hope that one day I might read them and sort out my life, but more accurately, it was in the hope that they might impart wisdom on me via some sort of wireless-osmosis from my little Ikea bookshelf, because I thought I was better than them.

But yeah, I did think I needed them. (Actually I need and am using stuff that’s a lot stronger, but that’s another story for another post).

Anyway, I’d been hearing bits and bobs about that book around the blogosphere so I decided to give it a shot. Plus the Chicken Soup guy said this:

“It’s about time this book was written. It is a long-overdue manifesto for the mobile lifestyle, and Tim Ferriss is the ideal ambassador. This will be huge.”
–- Jack Canfield

I love the Chicken Soup books! And I am all for the whole mobile working thing.

At completely cursory glance: I really don’t think I need all the internet marketing shit that’s mentioned in the sneaky readers-only page, and I have serious moral-dilemma issues with the whole “outsourcing your life” thing, but I’ll read the book and watch these videos and get back to you on that.

Anyway, I better get back to what feels like an 80-hour work week — I can’t even be all TGIF cause I know I have to come in on the weekend.

But maybe not for long 😛