Review: Frozen

I just watched Frozen the other night, and AAAHH!

Oh--I should get this out of the way early. I make no pretense of avoiding spoilers in my reviews.

Okay, the movie was merely okay. Maybe a six? (This brings to mind that I don't have a baseline for movies reviews. I'll have to fix that.) Not quite as good as I remember Tangled being, but I saw Tangled a while ago. Although it's possible I missed some early context that would have let me appreciate it more. But the music, gah, WEEEEEE!

Is Disney getting better at doing musicals, or am I at a temporal disadvantage of some sort for appreciating their older stuff--don't have context to appreciate it because I'm to young or like that? Or have I simply never heard it? Tangled and Frozen both had really good music.

But this is about Frozen, not Tangled.

Okay, first off, no villians. What? It's a Disney Musical with no villians. How weird is that? I guess there's a guy who's kind of a villian, but he's second-string stuff and more of a self-centered jerk than a real villian. (Although he acts really well, at least in-universe.)

Incidentally, kids: there's a moral about 'true love' and 'love at first sight' here. Pay attention to it.

For once, Disney has made a movie that approaches this 'true love' thing somewhat realistically. And I think they managed to double-subvert their romantic-movie conventions while they were at it.

Oh, Elsa's was the frozen heart healed by the act of true love, not Anna's. Just sayin'.

Final Verdict: A solid 6/10 for the movie itself--that was nothing much special, except maybe for Disney--but brought a 8/10 by the soundtrack. Though honestly, if you get the soundtrack, I recommend getting the movie; you should see them in context. I think the soundtrack is lurking at an above-nine "copy please" currently.

Make like a tree this holiday season #showkindness @kohls

"oh, crap", as it were

Are we really up to 4x04 already?! I haven't even finished season three yet!

[spoiler]
Twilight still has wings, I see. Mind you, I'd probably be griping if they hadn't kept them, too. It's not like you can just retcon something as major as apparently changing the species of the closest thing you have to a main character.
[/spoiler]

I only know this much because I wound up on this blogspot after doing this image search.

Leaves

My (library) copy of House of Leaves came in today. I already know that mainly I don't know what to think of it. I bet it could make for a great (La)Tex leaning tool, trying to re-create it. Whoever double-spaces their sentences, though; I like that^[1].

Apparently there is also braille which my edition does not have. Has anyone got notations or pictures or somesuch of those?

Footnotes:

^[1]Their monospaced sentences, at least. I can't tell about the other ones (I haven't gotten to them yet, but I doubt I'll be able to tell even once I do get there).

There's a grand total of one comment on my blog...

...And it's this guy:

Wait, that didn't really convey why this is a big deal. Let me clarify, with the help of some linked images.
It's this guy:

I've been following this guy off and on ever since I discovered him -- I forget how, probably through a Linux forum somewhere -- because he's practically always right. And out of entire internet, he comments on my blog?

Er, sorry. I'm just going to go dance around like a maniac and then collapse from the awesome.

text-to-speech

Buried within the docs for the Festival text-to-speech system for Linux is a mention of Klingon. Apparently, the system could be used to read things in Klingon, if only they could get a good sample of Klingon to work with. There's an honest-to-goodness request for a "Klingon continuous speech" corpus.

So, if you feel like translating something into Klingon and reading it out loud into a microphone, drop them a line.

Review: Of Mice and Men

I've heard about John Steinbeck for a while, but I've never read any of his stuff. A writer friend recommended him recently, so I finally picked up Of Mice and Men to give it a read.

Steinbeck. ZOMG Steinbeck. Where to start...

I've been watching #schoolhouserock recently. I find myself hoping Galaxy Girls has a one-off character named Jannet.

Life is weird.

AAHHH SEASON 3!!! #kermitflail #totalyabrony #mlp

Spoilers

It can be hard to tell whether spoilers make something more enjoyable, or less. Item I read recently would have been utterly ruined if I had spoilers beforehand. On the other hand, something I'm watching just now is extra-hilarious because I happen to know a detail that doesn't get properly revealed until later.

Jimmies at the grocery

Today at Price Chopper, we were standing in the 'dietics' section, and I happend to glance over and see the Jimmies gorrila. It was very wierd.

Elsewhere in the store, I came across the toys section. I'm standing there, "okay, big deal and all", and then I notice they've got one of the new MLP 'small' brushables. First one I've ever seen in the wild. So I'm standing there looking at Applejack, but I'm trying to be kinda casual about it, not obvious that I'm looking at it, and I realize that they FORGOT her HAT.
This is not a small issue. Applejack not having her hat is like going out in Antartica without your parka. It doesn't happen. Ever. C'mon, Hasbro.

...I still feel wierd talking about that just, y'know, out like that. In public to random people and all. Oh well.

At youth grout last night, it turned out that Jordan had some swagging Discord-type shades. I insisted that Hannah send me a picture.

Idea: audio project

So, crazy idea for an audio project. Probably best described by attempting to give examples, even though there's nothing to it yet.

<Strong>

Featuring the voices of:

• Twilight Sparkle, of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
• Raven, of Teen Titans

etc

<Faust>

Featuring audio clips from:

• My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
• Dexter's Laboratory
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends
• PowerPuff Girls

etc

Inspired in large part by this video:

Today was a day for AWESOME!

Today is/has been a day for awesome. I got involved in something with the potential to be big, but first, I'm gonna harp on the Culture of Integrity graduation event.

Mad greets to my bros David and Bryan, and my Hannahs Ruth and Ruttles. They graduated from our youth group's "Culture of Integrity" program tonight. They had to do a lot of hard but awesome stuff to pull this off, and they earned it. It really made me realize that badassery is actually made up of lots of small, almost-normal-but-not-quite things.

And, they got awesome swords to sweeten the deal! W00t w00t!

So, my big thing: Fellow in a subreddit I hang out in started talking about a charity notion he had. One of the things he wanted/needed was is website design. I offer to take a whack at it, despite never having done such a thing before.

He decided to take me up on it.

So now, I am slightly-more-than-three-quarters-seriously committed to looking around and trying my hand at creating a website. I actually think this is a good thing. It gives me something productive to work on, and I could really use the 'get out', even if it's a purely virtual get out.

The charity idea is approximately half-baked, but other than that this is going to be, as I said, AWESOME.

I Love this shiz!

Was reading the rant from the latest Megatokyo update. First paragraph, I notice the use of "Pony". (Oh heh... I probably ought to explain that a little. Topic for another post.)
I find it absolutely awesome when I notice stuff like this. We're everywhere, man!

...However, just now it is quarter to two in the morning and I really ought to be asleep.