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Sep. 20th, 2002 03:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vyvyanxThis morning I was dreaming that G and I were living in a new terraforming colony on some other planet, and our group were supposed to be sending valuable materials back to Earth, but we kept falling behind our targets because all our machinery was breaking down and couldn't be fixed or replaced. Even the terraforming and life-support equipment was gradually failing, and life was becoming more and more insupportable. In response to this, the colony's leaders had become totally fascist and were limiting everyone's freedoms in all sorts of ways in desperate attempts to keep the colony going. But it wasn't working, and we could see that we were all going to die slowly over the next few months. So G and I made a suicide pact, and went to jump out of a high window together. There was swelling music in the background; it was all very melodramatic like a bad film, but it felt very real. We embraced, and then advanced towards the window holding hands...and then my alarm went off and we were saved :-)
After that brush with death, I have been quite productive. I produced some wedding invitations using Lout, my batch typesetter of choice, and then went into college to print them onto nice card (secretly, in the fellows' photocopier room). I also printed out my report and posted it. Then, having used my fellows' key for the last time, I handed it in where I got it four years ago, to the Senior Bursar's secretary. She seemed pleased I'd remembered. Then I went to talk to the office about pay and room charges this month, and all was sorted.
Oh, yesterday I became strangely obsessed with making things from scratch, so I made soup from fresh tomatoes and potatoes, bread in the new tins my mum sent, and butter in a jar, from cream. Making butter is quite exciting. It takes a certain amount of faith that the process is going to work - you just have to keep shaking the jar in the belief that it will turn to butter. Eventually, and pretty instantaneously, it does. I was surprised by how much butter was produced from about half a pint of cream. I'd imagined the results would be about 50-50 butter-buttermilk, but it was more like 80-20 in favour of the butter. Once it had congealed in the jar, I pressed it to remove the remaining pockets of buttermilk, and then salted it. It tasted, well, exactly like butter, which rather surprised me. I suppose I'd thought it would taste different from shop-bought butter, in the same way that self-made bread tastes different from supermarket bread. But no, butter is just butter.
Addition: Also, yesterday evening we walked over to GC's place, with GB, to watch films with various others. Saw "The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover", which was really good (though I was dubious about it at the start). Then "Subway", another Luc Besson film. I really don't get on with Luc Besson. I loathed "The Fifth Element"; I only didn't walk out of the cinema for "The City of Lost Children" because someone else had paid for my ticket and I didn't want to offend them; and I fear, "Subway" was not really much better. Somehow, I managed to find all these films simultaneously offensive and boring. But it's hard to express exactly what about them I dislike. One aspect of it is that I despise all the characters. Anyway. The first film we saw last night was well worth it and very enjoyable.
After that brush with death, I have been quite productive. I produced some wedding invitations using Lout, my batch typesetter of choice, and then went into college to print them onto nice card (secretly, in the fellows' photocopier room). I also printed out my report and posted it. Then, having used my fellows' key for the last time, I handed it in where I got it four years ago, to the Senior Bursar's secretary. She seemed pleased I'd remembered. Then I went to talk to the office about pay and room charges this month, and all was sorted.
Oh, yesterday I became strangely obsessed with making things from scratch, so I made soup from fresh tomatoes and potatoes, bread in the new tins my mum sent, and butter in a jar, from cream. Making butter is quite exciting. It takes a certain amount of faith that the process is going to work - you just have to keep shaking the jar in the belief that it will turn to butter. Eventually, and pretty instantaneously, it does. I was surprised by how much butter was produced from about half a pint of cream. I'd imagined the results would be about 50-50 butter-buttermilk, but it was more like 80-20 in favour of the butter. Once it had congealed in the jar, I pressed it to remove the remaining pockets of buttermilk, and then salted it. It tasted, well, exactly like butter, which rather surprised me. I suppose I'd thought it would taste different from shop-bought butter, in the same way that self-made bread tastes different from supermarket bread. But no, butter is just butter.
Addition: Also, yesterday evening we walked over to GC's place, with GB, to watch films with various others. Saw "The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover", which was really good (though I was dubious about it at the start). Then "Subway", another Luc Besson film. I really don't get on with Luc Besson. I loathed "The Fifth Element"; I only didn't walk out of the cinema for "The City of Lost Children" because someone else had paid for my ticket and I didn't want to offend them; and I fear, "Subway" was not really much better. Somehow, I managed to find all these films simultaneously offensive and boring. But it's hard to express exactly what about them I dislike. One aspect of it is that I despise all the characters. Anyway. The first film we saw last night was well worth it and very enjoyable.
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Date: 2002-09-20 08:33 am (UTC)The other Luc Besson films I've seen are Nikita, Big Blue, Atlantis and Leon. He's done tons more, though. It's a shame you didn't like Subway - I was hoping you would, because I do in spite of thinking The 5th Element was a waste of time (apart, as I said, from the Bladerunner joke, which I enjoyed hugely). We actually watched another film after you left - Ghosts . . . of the Civil Dead. It's not exactly a bundle of laughs. It is, however, a pretty damning indictment of the US and Australian penal systems. And has Nick Cave being immensely scary for a few short minutes on screen.
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Date: 2002-09-20 09:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-09-20 10:07 am (UTC)Maybe you just don't like Gaultier costume designs? I believe he was involved with both of those films.
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Date: 2002-09-20 12:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-09-21 01:49 am (UTC)