Month: November 2010

Three sentence movie reviews: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I


I’m not the biggest fan of the movies as they cannot possibly include all that the books do, but I found this quite a good adaptation. This goes to prove what I’ve been saying: books five, six and seven all deserve to be split in two because too much happens to be contained in one two-hour movie. However, at Harry Potter Party VII, mostly the talk was of how well it was done.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2010/harry_potter_and_the_deathly_hallows_part_i.html

Eeeeeeeee! Today’s the day.

My account at the library says that Moonlight Mile, the long awaited next book in the Kenzie/Gennaro series is waiting for me at the library. The library which opens at guess what time? I shall walk over there now.


Indeed, here I am standing outside the library waiting for it to open.

I check my books on hold and find: nothing. Well, one book that I requested is there, but it is not Moonlight Mile. Puzzled, I recheck my account and find that [insert tremendous disappointment and crestfallen nature here] I have jumped the gun. In my excitement I have read the screen wrong and Moonlight Mile, while on its way, is not waiting for me at this moment.

I return to the hold shelf, grab my other hold, sigh, check it out, turn to go and that is when something stops me. I decide to check out the Lucky Day cart to see if they have anything good. I almost don’t do this, because I’ve got a long reading list for the Mock Printz workshop as well as a tremendously boring Library book group book to read as well as a sporadic book group book to read and who has time for something on the Lucky Day cart?

You will never guess what was there.

Yep.

Eeeeeeeee! I’ve got about four hours until it’s time to leave for the Harry Potter party and I will be doing only one thing.

Notes from sporadic book group.

For when I get stuck with “what to read” I bring the notes, lovingly typed up by Deborah, of our inaugural book group.

Books mentioned with enthusiasm at the first meeting of the Sporadic Book Group, 11/6/10 (Attendees: Deborah, Patricia, Amy, Danielle, Kelly)

Prodigal Summer
One Day
In the Woods
The Likeness
Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The Magic Thief
An Abundance of Katherines
My Life So Far (Jane Fonda)
Personal History (Katherine Graham)
Zeitoun (Eggers)
Possession (Byatt)
Where Men Win Glory
Into the Wild
My Own Country
Facing the Lion
Bonyo Bonyo
The Blind Side
An American Wife
Whale Talk
King of the Mild Frontier
Tales of the Madman Underground
Nature Girl (Hiaasen)
Moo (Smiley)
The Ghosts of Ashton High
We Planted a Tree
The Death-Defying Pepper Roux (described by Danielle’s sister as “Candide for kids”)
Eating Animals

Hot tip from Kelly: Submit comments to Powell’s Books and you might win the Daily Dose $20 gift certificate. http://www.powells.com/features/dailydose.html

I balanced the budget

So John Green clued me in that I could balance the budget and spoke eloquently as to why it’s not as easy as it looks. I took his challenge and fixed the budget. You may thank me later.

Want to do it yourself? Go here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyHR0XnU9DQ) which has John Green’s video and also the link so you can fix the budget. You can just click on the link without watching the video.


Those who know my bleeding heart liberal tendencies won’t be surprised to learn that I solved the deficit by increasing taxes (67% of my choices) vs. spending cuts (33% of my choices.) I figured I would go through and mark the “easy” choices and then go back and make the hard choices, but by the time I got to the bottom, I had all my squares colored in.

Want to know what I chose? Okay, here goes:

  • Eliminate earmarks (I think that everyone says they want to eliminate these while at the same time cheering on their representative when that representative brings home the federal cash. I never hear anyone point out that discrepancy.)
  • Eliminate farm subsides (I know, I just lost the midwest)
  • Reduce nuclear arsenal and space spending.
  • Reduce military to pre-Iraq war size and further reduce troops in Asia and Europe
  • Reduce Navy and Air Force Fleets
  • Cancel or delay some weapons programs
  • Reduce noncombat military compensation and overhead. (I checked everything in the military box)
  • Reduce the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to 30,000 by 2013
  • Enact medical malpractice reform
  • Reduce Social Security Benefits for those with high incomes
  • Tighten eligibility for disability
  • Modifying Estate Taxes, President Obama’s proposal (even I, stick-it-to-the-rich rabble rouser that I am can’t see reducing the estate tax to the Clinton-era levels. That sucker needed to be increased a tiny bit, but certainly not the way it was done, giving rich old people a big incentive to off themselves this year.)
  • Investment taxes: back to the Clinton era
  • Bush Tax cuts: allow expiration for those making over $250,000 per year. (I was going to go back and make them all expire, if I needed to, but I didn’t need to.)
  • Payroll tax: subject some incomes above $106,000 to tax
  • Millionaire’s tax on income above 1 million
  • Closing tax loopholes, I chose eliminate loopholes, keep taxes slightly higher
  • Reduce mortgage deduction and others for high-income households.
  • Carbon Tax
  • Bank Tax.

Three sentence movie reviews: True Grit


I watched this in preparation for the Cohen Brothers’ remake and I have to say I enjoyed it. It was a bit slow, in that pre-Mtv movie way, but was amusing. Kim Darby was right on the age of incredibly annoying and incredibly funny and it was fun to see Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall and a very young Dennis Hopper.

http://www.impawards.com/1969/true_grit.html

Three sentence movie reviews: The Brothers Bloom


I confess that I confused this with Everything is Illuminated and so was confused for the first twenty minutes until I just let it go. Overall, I found this con man caper a little slow, but there are beautifully shot scenes as well as fun quirky characters. Rachel Weisz’s clothing is fun to look at, and Mark Ruffalo is always easy on the eyes.

http://www.impawards.com/2009/brothers_bloom.html