Novel Eye

Remember how I had resolved to go to bed at 11 this week? Well last night my movie ended at about 10:45, came in, checked email, posted, all done at 11:02. So one should go to bed, correct? I'm so proud of myself that I decide to check the IMDB listing for Ridicule , then I check the IMDB listing for Flushed Away that I watched this weekend. THEN I read the comments on Flushed Away (for which I have to log in) because it had a lot of inside jokes and I wanted to see some lists. Instead I read the post of some idiot who "can't understand why they would make a film starring rats, slugs and toads," esp. as "women hate rats." There's a huge line of people all posting to tell him what an idiot he is, that a) it's not just women who hate rats, b) that many women DON'T hate or fear rats c) this is a cute film with anthropomorphic creatures, not REAL rats. I had not yet posted on IMDB at all, just lurked even though I been irked by a variety of comme...

My husband sent around an article from the BBC about how England had changed in the last 10 years and invited people to add how America had changed. I found this at the BBC site and as I was reading (and not getting a lot of the references) thought about the US. How has the US changed over the past 10 years? (Since we're much larger. Regional references are OK. I'll start: ~I93 (Boston) was a parking lot looming over our heads, now it's a parking lot under our feet. ~We (the US) had a national surplus in 1997, now we're 3 trillion dollars in debt. ~10 years ago there wasn't a Starbucks on every bloody corner. 1. Coffee is served by the pint and it will cost more than a pint of beer. 4. I remember arranging to meet friends at a given location/time many days in advance. If they were late you had to scratch around for 10p to ring from a phone box (and their mum would always tell you they had set off). They would never stand you up, as the cowardly way of cancelling wit...

Worked late last night, and now things are too slow. A friend wrote in July about the Tanabata Festival in Japan. One celebrates by tying wishes to Bamboo and then burning them or floating them on the water (the Japanese are all about burning and floating on the water--preferably together) after the festival or the next day. Now the difficulty lies in the fact that this is supposed to be celebrated on the 7th day of the 7th month or July 7th, right? But, NO! The Japanese Lunar calendar is closer to the Gregorian calendar and therefore a month off, so August 7th, but if fact, being Lunar is slightly different each year, so this year is closer to July 31st. So different towns in Japan celebrate it on different days. I found out about this last week and meant to remember not to forget to do it on the 7th, but instead remembered yesterday. So the question is, can I still celebrate this holiday since I would only be celebrating it with my husband and the day is clearly not the issue? What i...