meddow

Here’s an exercise for all of you living in the Northern Hemisphere. First, picture houses, streets, shopping malls, basically the whole world all decked up in Christmas finery with fake pine trees with reds and gold baubles everywhere and Christmas lights and fake snow and roast dinners. All of it screaming out warmth and comfort from a harsh cold winter, when you can sit around a fire with family and brandy.

Now take all of that and put it in July with a perfect cloudless blue sky and the sun blazing down and a temperature that matches. Everyone around you in the mall is wearing singlet tops and either shorts or skirts. And then you have why I think maintaining the Christmas traditions of the Northern Hemisphere in the Southern Hemisphere is just a little bit ridiculous.

I saw Children of Men today. Alfonso Cuarón is a genius. The plot is about a world that has lost hope, since women the world over have become infertile. There’s bombs going off in coffee stores, Britain has closed its borders and is rounding up refugees like cattle, and everyone else is either going to work or sitting around and smoking pot. Except, unlike every other science fiction movie which seems to be commenting on what the world will be like if we keep heading down the same path or if x happens, it’s a comment on what the world actually is like today. It’s Iraq. It’s filmed with a handheld camera style and in once scene blood splatters on the camera lens and it just keeps going, just like that infamous footage a couple of years back of a news crew that came under friendly fire. Watching it is like being in all that footage that is on the news every night. It’s brilliant and it’s tragic and I think you should all go and see it.

And if that doesn't convince you, this will - Aunt Marge in dreadlocks. I'm not kidding.

And now I’ve had my little comment on Xmas, and my comment on world affairs, now a slightly more materialistic question. I’m giving serious consideration to buying an ipod. Thing is, all my music on my computer is in mp3 format. Will that work on an ipod? I hear all these things about not buying an apple because of something to do with file formats and I don't want to ask the store people becasue they can never seem to give me a simple answer.

I got some concrit today, which is completely awesome cause love concrit. But it was about dangling participles. Which brought up the question, WTF is a dangling participle? I am absolutely sure that has never come up before in any classroom I’ve been in or book I’ve ever read. A quick trip to google and I’m onto what they are, but it brings up the bigger frustration of my life - I am so sick and tired of being a grammar idiot.

I’m working on it. I've been reading books and learning through concrit of fics and comments from betas and I've improved greatly. At the beginning of the year I didn’t know about dialogue formatting or even what a semi-colon was. I think I’m getting the hand of when to use a comma; I was bit to quick to use them before. But so many people out there are so brilliant at it and I feel so incredibly inadequate.

And I know I do it a lot, but I see it as something of a flaw to blame others for your own problem, but damn it, I feel ripped off. What on earth were my English teachers being paid for if not to teach me how to use the English language? I only learnt what a verb was because I took a beginner’s French paper at University. It’s not like I didn’t learn anything. I can list off definitions of language devices such as similes, alliteration and metaphors. But still, when I finished high school I couldn’t have picked out a semi-colon in a lineup. University’s not that much better. I got through my first three years and still had no idea of when to use a semi-colon. Then again it’s not a University’s job to point out the basics.

There is no point to this rant. I can’t change the education system and every country is different anyway. I’m just pissed off. But just think what would have happened if I had not ever submitted a fic and had it rejected from FictionAlley. It would certainly have been more embarrassing to enter the workplace with my appalling skills.

So I blew off spending the afternoon in the library for a trip to the movies and caught Mrs. Henderson Presents, which was rather good. Natalia Tena was in it, quite a bit actually, but her character was rather minor to the plot. Now I’ve seen her do punk (About a Boy), seen her do ditz (Mrs. Henderson Presents) and she’s been good at both.

In a random thought, why one earth is there not a large Ron/Draco movement in the fandom? I really like the idea of the two getting together (well I like the idea of Ron/Anyone - Ron/Meddow = OTP). There is a lot of potential there for drama since I can’t imagine either character enjoying the idea of having a crush on the other. And there is the whole “Weasley is my king” thing. Actually, I wonder why Ron is the character least likely to be portrayed a gay (it is much more likely than Ron the wife-beater)? Or are only effeminate men or ones with long hair allowed to be gay?

I made a userpic! I'm not technologically incapable! Of course nobody is going to get it. It's just me taking a swipe at the many, many people who sit there in lectures typing on their laptops instead of using paper like the suckers (such as me).

( Pretty Picture Here )

Of course I'm just a big hypocrite. If my laptop battery lasted more than six minutes I would be one of the typing drones as well. Now, off to search for pictures of Colin Firth.