Tuesday, September 28, 2010

A Question

I asked a question on my other blog, and I thought I'd ask it here too, in case there are people who read this blog but not the other one. In short, would anyone be interested in going to the Gluten Free Expo next weekend?

Also, my friend Lindsay posted this on her blog, and I thought it was worth posting myself. I love the song, even if the safari animals are a tad incongruous.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

How Avatar Ruined My Life

If you know me, you know I hate Avatar. And by saying that, I just lost 1,000,000 fans, I'm sure (or maybe more like 1). This is why:
It's an improvement.
1. I had to write 2 (TWO!) essays on the movie for one of my archaeology classes. One was about their kinship groups (how are we supposed to really determine that from a two-hour movie?) and the other was about their trash and their...other...waste, and what we can learn from it. Yeah. We also spent two class periods talking about how the Na'vi or whatever should have died out long ago based on their methods of food-getting in comparison to their religious beliefs. And it's true, they should have. I wish they had, then there wouldn't be the movie, and then I wouldn't have had to write essays about them. Wait, what? It's not real????????!!!?

2. James Cameron cheated, and does not deserve the prize for Movie That Made The Most Money Ever (yes, there is a prize for that). Not only did he release it in IMAX, which charges twice the normal rate, and not only is he re-releasing it (is anyone really going to see it a second time? wait....), but he also employed the use of one of my least favorite things on this good earth: 3D.

3. Why do I hate 3D so much? I once spent nearly two hours explaining it to a roommate before she finally understood where I was coming from. I'm not going to spend that kind of time on here because I'm not. In a nutshell:
-It looks fake to me. I can't get in to the movie, because the magic is lost.
-I hate wearing those big chunky glasses. They hurt. And...
-They are distracting. I can't focus on the film, and since the magic has been lost anyway, I can't concentrate. So I start fidgeting and looking around next to and behind me, and I see...
-Everyone looks like a bunch of blank robots. Mostly because of the glasses. They hide peoples' faces, so they look emotionless, and that, to me, is sad.
-A lot of the 3D effects are really just cheap tricks. You know, swooping through canyons, having the arrow/spear/whatever come OUT OF THE SCREEN OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW REEEEEAL IT LOOKS!!!
Honestly, I regard movies as works of art (I'm not being pretentious, at least not on purpose), and in my opinion, a good cinematographer will make the film feel real without having to rely on cheap tricks and overpriced technology. Also, the success that Avatar had financially/with 3D/with the masses means that there will never be a highly anticipated film that does not come out in 3D. I don't mind seeing it in IMAX, but I do not want it to be in 3D. That's actually what sparked this post. Harry Potter comes out in a couple of months, and I would absolutely love to see it in IMAX, but I can't without seeing it in 3D, because the two go hand in hand now. And because my darling sisters don't mind 3D, I'm going to lose something in the event (either their company as I watch it in 2D on a humble regular screen, or the reality and magic by seeing it with them in 3D). It's just not fair. Boo.

4. Avatar has become a cult. Seriously. Just think about it, I'm not going to explain it. One example is the people who wanted to kill themselves because Pandora wasn't real. Or because the world wasn't in 3D (???!??!?). Second example: they renamed the mountains in China that look sort of like the floating mountains in the movie to match those mountains, even though they were fashioned after the Chinese mountains to begin with!!!! Does that sentence make grammatical sense? Meh.

5. It's a ripoff of Pocahontas. Or Fern Gully. Or whatever. And Pocahontas is a million times cooler than Avatar. I quote Pocahontas all the time (sort of...), but does anyone ever quote Avatar? That's right.

6. Don't even get me started on the whole "But it makes me want to love the eeeeeearth...." thing. You should've been loving it anyway.

Don't shoot me.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Videos from Le Weekend

This weekend I went to the Hogle Zoo with my sister's Biological Anthropology class for their primate observation. Afterwards we looked at the big cats, because we love cats.
I also went to my other sister's house, and we hung out for a while. While I was there, my niece was singing to me, and it was cute.


Also, we had cake. It was very good cake. Is it weird that I promote myself?

Monday, September 13, 2010

Sticky Note

How do you like the new theme/layout/whatever? I like it, it's not as dark, and it's less simple or whatever.

Anyway, today I was in a building on campus and I stepped into the bathroom for a minute. While I was washing my hands, I looked up and on the mirror was a sticky note giving me a positive message. I'd read about something like this before, and I think it's kind of a cool idea.

There's a movement/organization/something called Operation Beautiful that puts positive messages like these in random places (public mirrors, stop signs, etc) in order to lift the self-esteem and body image of random people. The website has some good stuff to look at also, so you should check it out, or join the movement, or pass the message on, or whatever.

On a similar note, Glamour Magazine's latest issue had an article that talked about having a positive body image, and cited several stories of people's success stories, from men and women's points of view, about being heavy or overly thin. I found it very uplifting.

Happy Monday!

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Asleep My Love?

I'm sorry the blog has been dormant lately (although a couple of weeks is not nearly as bad as on the other blog). I won't have internet at home until probably Saturday, so this post will not include pictures from my trip home. Next time!

This week the new semester began, and although it has been sort of a crazy week, there are things I'm really looking forward to in the next few months.

I'm getting a new project at work (FINALLY), and it will technically be Collections (as opposed to Archives, which I've been working, and have never really wanted to work...), so my duties as a "Collections Aide" will finally be real. Or the closest thing to real it's going to get without having any actual collections to process...but that's another story. Also, a couple of days a week I will be supervising an intern (hooray for being the only employee with a regular work schedule), which I think will be a good opportunity to practice...supervising...haha. Anyway, I'm sort of excited for it.

Also, there's TONS of work to do in all my classes, which is fine, but for my Museum Culture class the professor is encouraging us to write exhibit reviews for the Museum Anthropology Review. I'm not going to lie, I have visions of me getting published in a peer-review periodical this semester. But if it doesn't happen, oh well, I'm still going to try!

On Sunday I got a new calling at church. I'll be the secretary for the Relief Society for the next little bit. I know the secretary's job is rather easy and perhaps even menial compared to the rest of the presidency, but I'm still excited to do it. I've watched all the past presidencies I've been through in my SA wards, and I've really learned to admire the way they know and love every one of the women at church. Seriously, I'm excited to take attendance, because it means I will know everyone's name and face. And I'm excited to support the other girls in the presidency with me, because they're great, and it's going to be awesome being around them all the time.

Hooray!