Timewaster's Guide Archive

Ok, so it should probably be "Websites you'd rather not have to live without," since none of them are probably essential for living.  But there are quite a few websites out there that I would greatly mourn should they disappear one day.

Half.com - has saved me so much money, and cost me so much money on things I might not have bought had they been so cheap.  I will be very very sad when Ebay shuts it down.

The Internet Movie Database, for one.  It's all about instant gratification of the "aaahh, where do I know that person from?" from every movie and TV show on earth.  And it's still free, amazingly enough.

Livejournal.  'Cause I'm a geeky girl who likes that kind of networking.

I realized that I really need to stop creating a new thread every time I want people's opinions on something literary.

This semester I took a class called "Literature of the American West," and we read and analyzed western novels and gumshoe/detective novels.

Ok, so while revising my paper just now, (which is due tomorrow) I realized something and subsequently added it to my paper.  Western novels were started in the early early 1900's, at the very end of the Victorian period. (The FIRST western novel, The Virginian, was written in 1902.  It began all western stereotypes and archetypes that exist today.)  But even though westerns have been written ever since that point, the western as a genre takes a very Victorian view of women.  Oh, sure it's the American Wild West, and women can be strong characters in their own way, but for the most part they're portrayed as wholy good and virtuous creatures.

Gumshoe/detective novels started in the 1920's and seem to all involve a more Modernist view of gender- women are more often than not the criminals.  Brigid in the Maltese Falcon is as crazy as they come.  The unearthly beautiful wife in The Long Goodbye is a murderer, and the other women are nymphomaniacs or just disillusioned with life.  I don't see this as being particularly misogynistic, just more of a backlash against the "Angel in the House" ideas of Victorian thinking.   Men can be evil.  Women can be evil, and they're even better than men at hiding it most of the time.

This has changed somewhat, since detective novels aren't really written gumshoe style anymore, but it's really really interesting to me.

I don't really have a question here, just thought it was interesting and wanted to know what everyone else thought.

So I got a book of short stories by D. H. Lawrence out of the library, after covering him in my lit class and being somewhat impressed by what I read.

I don't know, though.  His stories are very interesting, but obviously the work of a disturbed mind.  90% of them are about women who are dissatisfied with their relationship, or don't want to HAVE a relationship.  I was eerily reminded of EUOL's penchant for having his female characters avoid marriage at all costs.  

So the bottom line is, nobody fashion your female characters after D.H. Lawrence, except for EUOL, who can perhaps pick up some pointers.

Actually his insight into the female mind isn't THAT bad- Lawrence has a rather disturbing ability to depict the irrational behavior of women, and from their point of view as well.

So while watching Dogma on TV I thought that this would be a fun idea for a topic.  Post about an actor that you can't stand, but who has one (or event two) movies that you actually like.

I hate Ben Affleck, but I like him in Dogma.  Or Cameron Diaz.  Can't stand her.  The only movie she's ever made that I like is The Mask.

What IS it about infomercials that makes them so goofy, yet I can sit and watch them for an entire afternoon?

Why?  Why?

Also, where and when did the name infomercials orginate?

Ok, so since I was on airplanes this weekend, I bought (ok, begged my husband to buy) a copy of Stephen King's book Wolves of the Calla - the next Dark Tower book.

If you haven't read the Dark Tower series, go soak your head and then read it.

If anyone has comments on this book put them here, and if not, I will when I'm done, and there will be spoilers, so read the book, darnit.

Now, I never watched this show when it was on, and in fact I never heard about it before J.T. found rips of a bunch of old episodes.   (This is probably due to the fact that the show began a year before I was born.)

*pauses to allow the usual "you're so young!" jabs*


Anyway, watching it now, it's acutally extremely cool, and I'd like to hear if anyone else on this board watched it as a kid.

For those of you who didn't, it's about this guy who's a teacher.  Aliens give him a superhero suit, but he loses the instruction booklet, and he, his lawyer girlfriend and cranky FBI agent partner have to save the world.

And it has the BEST theme song in the worl.