Week in Review

[kate_nepveu]

Locations of this week's painful, itchy, and swollen insect bites:

• The cartilaginous rim of my ear (unknown source).
• My ankle, shin, and knee (a three-fer, probably from a spider).
• The inside corner of my eye, just above the tear duct (small black fly).

And that was all before doing yardwork today (five mosquito bites in about ten minutes of pulling up dandelions in the back yard).

I want to join the Culture and change my body chemistry enough that biting insects no longer find me appealing.

Saw the Pirates movie yesterday. It's my impression that the critics were mostly "Enh" and the public was mostly "Yay!" I'm afraid that I'm mostly on the side of the critics for this one.

While I enjoyed the original more than I expected to, I noticed that it did not hold up well on subsequent viewings: it was much too long and Orlando Bloom expressed all emotion by wrinkling his brow.

Orlando Bloom was less immediately annoying in this one (though Will Turner is much too trusting), but Jack Sparrow was considerably less fun. Which, yes, is the point—character arc and all, which to be fair is more than I expected out of this—but it was far, far too long for me to sit through without Captain Jack Sparrow to amuse me. The cannibal sequence is particularly bad—not only does it uncritically pass along a harmful racial stereotype, but it does so in a way that completely and utterly fails to advance the overall plot!—but even scenes that played a purpose went on for just long enough for me to be thinking, "Okay, move on, already." Especially since this is not a series that benefits by giving the viewer time to think. (I hate the attempt at a romantic triangle, but even the way I see it isn't any better; it reads to me like Elizabeth's not-so-latent pirate inclinations are getting her confused between attraction to and admiration for the quintessential pirate, but that leads back to the whole problem that there's no socially-accepted role for her to indulge those tendencies in, and, anyway, pirates are not actually admirable, and various other socially and emotionally realistic considerations that just can't breathe the same air as the movie.)

That said, Norrington all scruffy and ruthless was entertaining, and I liked the combination of the Flying Dutchman and Davy Jones' locker. Of course we'll see the third, just because, but since there's absolutely no incentive for the filmmakers to exercise any more story discipline next time, you'll almost certainly be seeing the same rant from me in a year or so.

Also, interesting commentary on the dice game by th_nightengale. I had no idea that ones were wild.

The hardest I laughed at the theater was actually for a trailer. It opened by stating that we were "told" that the Mars Beagle was lost in 2003, but its last transmission was classified Top Secret, and "it was the only warning we had." Ominous music, blurred shot of something over the Beagle, and then a view of Earth being slowly occluded by something that turned out to be the movie title.

Which was . . .

.

.

.

Transformers.

Laughed harder than at any time thereafter.

Finally, Movable Type 3.3 is out, and while I haven't installed it yet, I intend to. With this upgrade, it now natively supports tags along with categories, and I'd like some feedback from readers, librarians, and others with organizational tendencies.

Right now, I have the booklog set up so that every book is in a categeory according to genre and, where appropriate, subgenre and series. There are index pages for each category and subcategory, with books listed in alphabetical order by author, so they can be browsed (plus pages covering various time periods). There is also a search function.

I'd briefly toyed with the idea of also setting up category pages by author, but put it aside: it was technically fiddly, it would have meant a shitload of categories, and I wasn't sure of the utility. It occurs to me that tags might be the way to do author categorization; would anyone expect to use that? Has anyone confronted these same challenges elsewhere, with what conclusions? Can anyone think of other interesting or useful things to do with tags for a booklog?

Comments

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

silmaril and I lost it on that trailer too. Well, she cracked up on "we were told it crashed." I chuckled there, too, but when I saw the title, I totally collapsed into fits of laughter.

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

While the dice game commentary was interesting, the poster assumes that the rules he or she knows for the game are the only ones, which is certainly not the case. In the version I play, a bid of 6 threes after a bid of 5 fours is perfectly legal, and based on other information I believe it was intended to be a legal bid in the film, although I haven't seen it myself.

[kate_nepveu]

Are any of these differences relevant to the ultimate result, that Will had the winning hand?

[(Anonymous)]

It's not a question of having a winning hand, but of making the winning bid (or more normally, a good bid - the game is generally played over multiple rounds). The dice you have are not relevant except as information you can act on.

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

Whoops, that was me.

[kate_nepveu]

Any difference to the conclusion drawn by the poster, then.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

IMHO, not really. Certainly, for me, the big revelation is that ones are wild, Will had the winning bid, and Bill screwed up. This reinforces the "Will as pirate" aspect, given Jack's floundering, Bill's failed attempt at paternalism, Jones's suspicion...and, of course, Will's point was that he wasn't playing to win, he was playing to get information.

But one of the points in the comment is a good one, and one I'd figured they were actually going for: you don't win by playing the Devil's game against him. You have to come at it sideways. I think it's not impossible that, had Bill not bet, Will would have revealed his hand, and either ones wouldn't have been wild, or one of the fives (or the one) would have been changed, or maybe one of Jones's fives would have vanished, etc.

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

It's hard to say. Bill's bid was definitely designed to force Jones to call him - that much is certainly true. What I can't say for certain is what he SHOULD have done. The poster assumes that Jones could really have called Will before Bill bid. Maybe he could have, but in the version of the game I am familiar with (and the version I suspect they are supposed to be playing, since it's the tie-in version you can actually buy, and allows the 5 fours->6 threes bid), he could not have - in that version, you can only call when it is your turn, so Jones could have done nothing at that point.

If this is correct, Bill's options were to call Will (not a good idea, unless I am missing something), bid 9 fives, or bid something higher. If it had been me there, I would have bid 9 fives - bidding higher does nothing except make it more likely for Jones to call. If Bill had bid 9 fives, it's still not too likely that Jones will lose - he would have to bid 10 fives, and have Will call him. Will I imagine would call that, but I doubt Jones would bid 10 fives, given that Bill wasn't bidding fives early.

I should note that if Jones WAS allowed to call Will's bid out of turn, and if he was really supposed to be trying to do that when Bill bid, Jones was playing very badly. Given that Jones has 4 fives, the expected total number of fives on the table is 7 1/3. 8 is higher than that, but just a bit - it is NOT a very safe call (and in fact would have failed). No one I know would have called 8 fives in that situation.

Of course, Jones should have called Bill's bid of 6 threes if he were playing sensibly (since he has none, the expected number is 3 1/3). So maybe only Will can play the game well.

[markerikson.livejournal.com]

Are you saying that the trailer itself was absurd? Or that a Transformers movie is absurd?

I'm actually relatively excited about this movie. Yeah, it is being directed by Michael Bay, and the first screenwriter they had was the same guy who gave us Catwoman - but they've since replaced him with some marginally more respectable writers. However, they've also got the original voice actors for Optimus Prime and Megatron on board, and have so far only cast about three human characters. So I'm cautiously optimistic.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

The trailer was ridiculously absurd, I assume on purpose. It's the sort of thing that, if I'd seen it on YouTube six months ago (without having heard any news), I'd've thought it a slightly over-the-top parody.

[kate_nepveu]

My associations with "Transformers" are not anywhere near serious, scary, weighty, or *anything* enough for the word to live up to that trailer.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

For me the high points were Norrington down and out--if Elizabeth had seen his bad side in the first movie she might well have liked him better, ruthless little girl that she is!--and the make-up for Jones & Co. I especially liked the Lovecraftian overtones of Jone's octopus-do, and the bits with the Mighty Wurlitzer.

Ditto on the cannibals. Waaaaaay too long, too.

[kate_nepveu]

The organ interested me less than the pendants--that was the same as what the priestess/witch/woman who's name I don't think I ever heard properly had, yes?

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

Can anyone think of other interesting or useful things to do with tags for a booklog?

I don't use tags much. For my booklog here, I make each entry a memory, with the description (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?keyword=all&user=kgbooklog&sortby=des) including the date read, title, and author; and the keywords (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=kgbooklog) be the author and copyright date. Over on Library Thing (http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=kgaert), I use tags to mark which ones I haven't read (or didn't finish) and a hint about where the book is hiding.

[kate_nepveu]

I'm starting to tag my Library Thing books with unread & a likelihood of being read. I really need to finish that one of these days.

[iapetus11.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I seemed to remember that I had a similar reaction to that trailer when I saw it. Crazy.

[kate_nepveu]

I saw absolutely nothing to suggest it was deliberately over-the-top, either. I'm sorry, but I really can't take a Transformers movie seriously.

[iapetus11.livejournal.com]

I know, there was a definite lack of we-know-this-is-cheesy to the trailer; it just doesn't feel like they're having a bit of a laugh with it.

Looks like Bay might just screw this one up, which is a shame because I grew up with Transformers; I want it to work.