Things I learned from Spirited Away:
Radish spirits have nipples.
A mouse plus a very tiny bird equals extra cute.
Be extra nice to everybody, no matter how smelly they are — you might end up with a magical fruit.
Good movie. I suggest people see it.
So I went to Circuit City. They’re still willing to install the stereo, except… oops! They don’t have the right wiring harness! They’ll have to call the place on Monday and have one sent next-day. So, I should be able to go in on Tuesday or Wednesday and they can do it then. The sale ends today, but they’ll let me take advantage of it then anyhow, because they messed up.
At least it’s forward progress, of a kind.
And if it sounds like I’ve been whining here, that’s because I have been. I apologize.
I got a new Indian movie from Netflix. When I look it out of the sleeve and saw the running length, my heart dropped — 225 minutes. For those not up to the math, that’s 3 hours and 45 minutes. Nearly 4 hours of hammy acting, crappy songs, bizarre language… ugh.
Boyo, was I wrong. This movie is really pretty good. It’s shot professionally, with real camera moves, proper lighting, etc. It even has some very beautiful shots of the sere deserts of the pre-monsoon Indian countryside. It’s set in the late 19th century, and is about a cruel British overlord who is taxing them to death. I’m only an hour into the movie at this point, so of course none of the plot has actually been presented yet — we’re still in the first act, introducing main characters and stuff like that. It should get pretty juicy around 2:30 though.
Joking aside, I’m really enjoying the film. Sure, it has an unremittingly evil and bombastic antagonist, the heroes are pure and good, the plot is incredibly simple, and I basically know what’s going to happen up until the end. But the songs are fun, the action is entertaining, and since it’s a DVD I can pause it liberally and space the 4 hours out a little bit.
The moral of the story: Bad Indian movies are really, really bad. But the good ones, like Lagaan are really pretty good.
Part 2 in the Saga For Sound
or,
Why the Hell Can’t I Just Get it Installed?
OK, so I went up to the Best Buy today that said they had the radio I wanted in stock. I find it. They have it. I ask. They’ll install it. I say, “I’ll buy it.” Things are going well.
So, the way it works is that you buy the car stereo at the front, just like you were buying anything else, like a CD or a new TV or whatever. You then take your new stereo around to the side of the building, where they have a little garage thing (which I’d never noticed before), and they install it into your car over there. So, I do that. And they’re not busy so they can install it right away. Except. Except that they can’t install it because they’re afraid of my car. It’s electric! It has a touch screen! No matter that this car has been on the market for 3 years, and that it’s a standard Toyota stereo bay. They won’t do it.
So I decide to do it myself. I found some instructions online, and they really look pretty easy. I take my stereo, get in my car, and leave. I’m doing some more shopping / errands kind of stuff and I notice a Circuit City, which I had known was there, but since Circuit Cities suck, I had never really considered it before. And it occurs to me that the Circuit City might have a little hidden car audio installation garage around back, just like the Best Buy did. So I go investigate. And they have one. So I go in.
Yes, they will install the stereo I already have. Yes, in a Prius. Yes, they know it’s electric. No, they’re not scared of the touch screen. Yes, I have an appointment for Saturday. Yay!
Now, they’re having a free installation sale, but only if you buy the stereo from them. Otherwise, it’s $100. I look at their car audio section. They have a better selection than Best Buy, and better prices. So, I go and return the stereo to Best Buy. I’ll go back to Circuit City on Saturday morning, buy a new stereo, and they will install it. For free.
Unless they decide not to.
The misadventures of car audio.
So I intentionally got my new car without a stereo of any fancitude, in order that I might get an MP3 player for it. I’d done some research (of course) and found a number of different models that I liked, and didn’t find any indication that installing one into the Prius would be any kind of problem. The day I bought the car, I stopped by a car audio shop to get one installed, only to find that I was too late — all of their installers had gone home for the day. So I went home too.
Yesterday morning, I got up early and went back down there. After every employee in the shop got to go look around my car, they came to the conclusion that no stereo can possibly be installed in such a car, and I would have to get this FM Transceiver thing that would transmit the music to my internal car stereo over FM. This sounded kind of stupid, but I agreed and we set up an appointment. When I got home, I did some more research at found, for sure, at least one stereo exists that could be installed in my car, and they carried it at Best Buy. So I went out there. They told me that not only do they have the Jensen that would fit in my car, *any* of the stereos they had in stock would fit in my car. Now I’m confused. I picked out the model I wanted, a nice Sony, only to be told that they didn’t have it in stock. Bah.
So now I have to go find some other car audio shop (or at least another Best Buy) that has the unit I want, is willing to install it and I trust not to tear holes in my car. I’ve been doing so much research now about
this installation stuff that I almost think I could do it myself. Did I say “bah” yet?
New car. Yay!
Doesn’t anybody know *anything* interesting to do in Lexington, Kentucky?
You’re letting me down here, folks.
Bought booze today.
I haven’t had alcohol in the house for probably over a year. Decided it wasn’t a great idea to drink alone, and, for me at least, drinking at home is tantamount to drinking alone.
But, I was out of batteries. Actually, the new wireless controller for my XBox decided to leave itself vibrating the entire time I was at work, and the batteries were dead. And I only had one AA left, and the controller needs 3. So, I went out, intending to go to the pharmacy in the nearby mini-mall to grab some batteries. Of course, that pharmacy isn’t there any more. The building is there, and the lighted sign is there, but the store itself lies gutted and empty, with a piece of paper taped to the door, onto which has been scrawled, “Your prescriptions are at $address.” Next door to the pharmacy was a liquor store.
Not one to be foiled in my attempts to spend money, I visited said liquor store and purchased two of my all-time favorites — 100 proof Absolut and Rumpleminz.
Then I went to the nearby supermarket where I bought batteries. And brie. And Triscuit. And donut holes.
Anybody know anything interesting to do in Lexington, Kentucky?
I want to talk about my book system.
I guess it’s kind of a conceit that anybody will care about it, but there aren’t many aspects of LiveJournal writing that can’t be called a conceit at some level or another, so I guess I’ll press on. The basic idea behind my book system is that of fairness — mainly to books. What I mean is, I feel bad if I buy a book, or somebody gives me a book, and it ends up just sitting on my shelf for too long not being read. I feel like that book is being marginalized somehow.
So if I just left things to my own choice at the time of choosing a new book to read, books will get ignored all the time, especially if the book doesn’t seem very exciting or if maybe I think it’s going to suck. Or especially if I know it’s going to suck. So the key is random choice. It’s only fair if the book I’m to read is chosen at random from the available books — then one book won’t be shown preference over another for any reason. When I was younger and my “to-read pile” of books was more manageable, I had a reasonably simple system of dice-rolling that allowed me to select books at random from reasonably small selections. For example, if I had 15 books, I could roll a 10-sided die and a 6-sided die, add the results, subtract one and count down from the top of the pile. If I had 57 books, I would split the pile into 3 equal sections, use a 6-sided die to decide which pile to use, and then use a 20-sided die (ignoring 20s) to choose the book from the selected pile.
It was actually kind of fun figuring out the proper dice combinations, but as my book purchasing continued to outpace my book reading, and the “to-read” pile got bigger and bigger, eventually turning into a “to-read” shelf and ultimately into a “to-read” bookcase, the dice method got to be less and less viable. I also had fewer and fewer dice as I stopped playing role-playing games. Furthermore, I needed some way to keep track of all of my books, not just the ones I had yet to read — the current method of pieces of paper, a few text files on my computer, and one HTML file on my web site was also not scaling well to the ever-burgeoning book collection.
So we come to the current system. I have a relational database to describe all of the books I catalog. Each book can be in one of 4 states: “want to buy”, “can’t read yet”, “will read” and “have read”. I have a web-based interface on my home computer that lets me add books and maintain the database. I have two web pages, here and here, that I automatically generate from the database and, of course, I have a utility that randomly chooses which book I should read next.
Bah.