Oh. My. God. The Snook is going to laugh himself silly over this Jar-Jaromir thing. Hee! (Link courtesy of Max.)

In Australia, even the birds can kill you. Cripes.

I listened to all of Northern Lights from the His Dark Materials radio show at work today. (Did I mention how non-mentally taxing my work is right now?) To be honest, I don’t think it’s that great of an adaptation. I would’ve preferred more of a straight “books on tape” type of thing. It felt dumbed down. For instance, the narrator actually introduces himself as a “recording angel” at the beginning. What’s the point of that? The author is assuming I’m too dumb to accept an anonymous third-person narrator. Also, he spells out everything. The first five minutes are like, “Hi, I’m an angel and I’m in Oxford, which is one of many Oxfords in millions of parallel universes. In this universe, everybody’s souls are animals outside their bodies.” Again, no respect for the audience’s intelligence. Everybody who reads the story figures that stuff out eventually, and it’s a lot more fun to come to those realizations on your own. Like, at least twice people say, “Oh, Lyra’s going to save the world. She’s going to betray somebody, but she can’t know that she’s going to do it.” I’m like, why don’t you just ruin the ending while you’re at it! Jeez. I also felt like it didn’t really build up enough scariness or suspense. When I first read the book, I had nightmares about Mrs. Coulter and that damn monkey. But it feels like she’s barely even in the recording. There wasn’t a lot of menace there.

That said, there were some good things. I liked the little bits of music they used for scene changes and when Lyra read the alethiometer. The voice casting was very good, especially the armored bears. I’m interested to hear what they do with Will in the next installment…

Everything I Need to Know in Life I Learned From Flo on The Amazing Race:

• When things get tough, pretend to throw in the towel. Your teammates will then have to beg you to continue, which puts you in a position of power. It also means you can absolve yourself of any responsibility towards the final outcome.
• Being tired is a totally valid excuse for being a bitch.
• Never, ever carry your own backpack.
• Being young means you can outrun everybody else in a footrace, except when you can’t, but that’s only because you’re so tired and put upon.
• A great way to relieve stress is to throw a helmet. Trust me, you’ll feel better for it.
• When faced with an obstacle or challenge, always make the man do it.
• Never stay in a hotel that charges less than 25 euros a night.
• There’s always time for flirting, even when your partner is totally supporting your ass. Of course, that’s his job!
• Guys can’t resist a crying girl, so do it a lot. You’ll get your way.
• No matter how bitchy and whiny and terrible you are, a small “Sorry” will always clear the slate.

As the Snook put it tonight, “The awful paradox is that no one deserves the money less than Flo or more than Zac. Whatever. (If she had any class at all she would’ve given her share to him.) Did you catch the fact that in the closing shot, she was the only person sitting up on her partner’s shoulders? He was still carrying her ass. What a perfect summation of their twisted relationship. She makes me embarrassed to be a girl. Meanwhile Teri and Ian won my grudging respect, and Ken and Gerard nearly made me cry. I’m glad they had such a good experience together. And that’s all I gots to say about that.

“Spying on Snookums with GPS.” That’s what the story’s called! How funny. We don’t have a car, so he doesn’t have to worry.

As Max pointed out, BBC Radio is dramatizing Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. The first part is already online. (Note: it’s a sucky streaming Real Audio file though. Drop me a line if you’re interested in having an mp3 version instead. I love the Snook.)

Apple leaps into the browser wars with a new offering called Safari. So far it’s very beta, but it hasn’t crashed anything and it sure looks purty. There are also new versions of iCal and iSync, and even a new X Windowing System just for OSX. I am one happy Mac girl.

I told you we were going to the cricket on Saturday, right? Well, we did. It was Day 3 of the fifth test of the Ashes Series. (Yank translation: It was the third day of the fifth match in the biannual five-match series between Australia and England that’s been going on since 1882.) Australia had already secured the series 4-0 and were looking to sweep for only the second time ever. The only seats we could get were on the Hill… which meant we were going to be sitting amongst the Barmy Army. (Yank translation: We had to sit amongst 15000 crazy rabid British cricket hooligans.) The day started off badly; we had to wait half an hour just to get into the stadium because Security was going through every backpack and cooler. (And when you’re attending a seven hour sporting event, you always bring a backpack and a cooler.) I was still in line when Steve Waugh (my favorite player) got out. Bloody hell. By the time I settled into my seat, I was ready for a day of misery. Instead it was pretty fun. The Barmy Army were great. (One of them came up with a great cheer: “We’ve got three dollars, to the pound!” sung to the tune of “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” There’s no comeback to that one.) The only problem was the heavy police and security presence. Every half hour they’d just swoop down on someone and kick them out. It kinda put a damper on things. I’d also like to report that I knitted during the first three hours of the match! (The Snook and Steve were mortally embarrassed.) But at least Marci will have the satisfaction of knowing her Slytherin scarf was knitted at a traditional English sporting event!

Oh! The cricket also introduced me to a new concept: beer wenches. You know how they’ve got vendors that bring cans of Old Milwaukee to you in the stands at American baseball games? Yeah, they don’t do that here. You’ve got to get up and go to the beer stand. This gets to be quite a pain after a while. So some enterprising group came up with the idea of “beer wenches”. Basically, you get a bunch of guys together who pay for two scantily clad hoochies to do nothing but buy their beer throughout the match. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Two skanky blondes in ripped T-shirts and Daisy Dukes traipsing back and forth, carrying four beers each at a time to the inebriated Aussies in front of us. (I heard a fellow spectator mention that the girls had to earn at least $300 each.) About an hour before the match ended, the cops decided that the easiest way to quiet the masses was to cut off their beer supply. Hence, the beer wenches got kicked out. You should’ve heard the uproar. You’d have thought they’d set fire to the flag. 🙂

Anyway, here are a couple photos from the day. In the first you can see the large group of yellow-shirted Aussies in front of us. (They were the ones with the beer wenches.) They were sorta the anti-Barmy Army. They had some good cheers at the beginning, but they faded as Australia started sucking. They also had an Elvis impersonator, who kicked ass. Next you can see two patriotic Aussies holding up their version of the nation’s flag. (The real version has the Union Jack on it. This version had it removed with the federation star blown up in its place. In retaliation the Barmy Army sang, “Get your shit stars off our flag!”, to which the Aussies replied, “You’ve got Scotland on your flag!”. Again, no comeback is possible.) Next is an extremely blurry shot of Steve, Snookums, and me, as taken by the idiot in the row in front of us. Lastly is another shot of the crowd that shows the police presence as they swoop down on some unsuspecting fan. Bastards.

I keep meaning to post my extended “rules of cricket as explained by baseball analogies” essay to the site and forgetting. I should do that.

The Snook and I are recording the finale of The Amazing Race right now. I don’t wanna watch it, because I know I’ll get sucked in and won’t get any sleep before work tomorrow. Therefore please do not mention the results until, like, Wednesday in America (that would be at least midnight tomorrow for you Aussies). It’s probably pointless, though, because I have a very, very evil premonition that Flo and Zach might pull it out in the end… (Feel free to discuss the penultimate episode though. I was literally yelling at the screen for him to slap her. What a whiner! Did she realize how awful she’d look on screen? Did she just not care? How can people be like that?)

Holy shit. (Believe me, the language is totally justified.) The Snook and I went to dinner tonight to our new favorite Newtown place, “Asakusa”. It’s Japanese. The first time we had tempura and chicken and gyoza. Tonight, though, I was feeling adventurous. Not only did I eat an entire tempura prawn (that’s a big shrimp, to you Yanks), I also had “futomaki”, which is also known as “california roll” (seaweed wrapped around rice, prawn, egg, cucumber, and avocado). But even that isn’t the Highlight of the Week. My “bento box” came with gyoza, kara age chicken, and three pieces of actual sushi. Yeah, vinegared rice with pieces of raw salmon on top. It didn’t smell fishy, so I decided to give it a go. As per the Snook’s instructions, I put a tiny amount of wasabi on top and drizzled it with soy sauce. Then… a bite. It was good! In fact, I didn’t taste the fish at all. I was pretty surprised. The way some of y’all rave about sushi, I expected it to be a magical experience. Instead it was just… okay. I don’t get the fuss. The wasabi though… WAAAASAAAABI! Love it. I ended up eating the whole thing! Even the Snook was surprised. So this is pretty amazing, right? My family should be crapping themselves, at any rate. I have been pretty much phobic about any and all fish/seafood my entire life. And tonight I ate it RAW!