Avengers Review -- Somethingth Post

First off, I can't remember how many posts there actually are. I think I skipped a bunch of numbers, but I can't be asked to go back and fix everything.
Know what else I can't be asked to do?
Homework. Yeah, it's finals. Yeah, I have four things due for one class and an exam in another tomorrow. No, I don't want to work on those.
So, here's what will hopefully be a largely spoiler-free review of The Avengers, the new superhero movie by marvel that all the kids are talking about.
Yeah, I went to the midnight premier even though I had an exam the next day. I've been waiting for this movie since the first Ironman whenever it came out (I was in high school then; I'm very nearly a senior in university now); I'm not going to let a little thing like an exam in my hardest class stop me from seeing this the day it comes out.

The trailers had been indicating that all these extremely strong, movie-carrying characters were going to be working together but still having issues and experiencing internal conflict due to their extremely strong personalities. This was encouraging. You don't get to be a superhero without being independent, strong, and forceful (unless you're that pansy, Spiderman), and superhero-type personalities don't mix well. Luckily, Nick Fury was a super-strong personality as well as being the purported leader of the gang, so no one was fighting over who got to call the shots, just who was, you know, right about stuff like who had the right to beat the shit out of Loki.
Who was played really well, by the way. I have a soft spot for non-satanic "bad guys" in mythology because they just tend to be misunderstood over time and disney. Hades didn't torment anybody, he just made sure everyone followed the rules of the underworld (which included the paradise-like afterlife and wasn't just a sort of greek hell). Zeus was a dick, though. Loki wasn't evil, just mischievous (well portrayed in Thor, I thought) in a way that sometimes came into conflict with everyone else.
The film really dug into the basic nature of humanity in the conflict between Loki and everyone else, making it interesting to watch from a philosophical viewpoint (one of my classes is dealing with some of the actual statements made in the film). It also dug into Tony Stark's hidden depths, since he mostly just developed compassion while still being a rich egotist in his other two movies.
While Bruce Banner was not played by the same guy as in The Incredible Hulk (2008-ish; I was in high school but it was after the first Ironman), this new guy did a great job of portraying Bruce Banner and the Hulk.
I was pleased by the tension between Captain America and Tony Stark. I was hoping for some, since Steve Rogers had pretty much been BFFs with Howard Stark, who Tony only barely came to forgive (for kind of being a terrible dad) in Ironman 2. There's a scene where Tony and Steve get into an argument and leave muttering angrily; Tony comments that if this is really the guy that his dad wouldn't shut up about, maybe they should have left him on ice. Still, they get over it because of a HUGE FUCKING PLOT TWIST OMG!
I won't tell you what it was, but Joss Whedon is a sneaky bastard who kills off his main characters and can't even be blamed for it by the end of the movie because it works out so perfectly.
Damn you, Joss Whedon. You kill people off and I can't even hate you for it.
We are all Joss Whedon's bitches, is what I'm saying here.
Another thing that impressed me was how there was no love story. All the others, including both Ironmans, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America, have had love stories that are sort of central to how the movie runs, how the main characters roll, and how the probable sequels might be set up. The only love story in The Avengers is between Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, and it's really just a few scenes showing that they're in a committed relationship and that Tony really loves her a lot. Thor's lady, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman, if you've forgotten her name as thoroughly as I had), gets shuffled out of harm's way without us ever seeing her. He better have dropped by, because if I saw that my demigod man had saved the human race from devastation without even saying hello even when I'd been looking for him relentlessly after his einstein-rosen bridge had been smashed, well...
Well, I'd take him back, but he'd better be sorry.
Presumably, Captain America's lady is dead or very, very old with grandchildren. Not a lot of WWII veterans hanging around nowadays. My grandparents are in their 80s, and they were children during the war. She wasn't even mentioned, which I thought was a bummer.
Bruce Banner's love interest from The Incredible Hulk (Liv Tyler, of all people) wasn't brought up at all either. She really wouldn't have fit and the whole thing was a bit odd in the first place.
Basically, there was enough personal growth and team growth that they didn't need love stories to drive the action. The action was driving itself well enough.
A new story that popped up was Hawkeye and the Black Widow. There were romantic undertones, but you mostly get the impression that the Black Widow cares more for Hawkeye than she does for anyone else in the whole world because she owes him. I would watch a movie about those two, even if they didn't end up together. They could be best friends forever and I would be okay with that.
Also, Robin from How I Met Your Mother is a SHIELD agent.

Overall, the film is a great blend of action and plot, with great explosions and these fish things from outer space. I also suspect the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving's character in Captain America, you know, the guy with the creepy-ass red head who gets tesseracted out into space?) is involved.
There are slow spots at the beginning, but once it gets going, it's awesome. There's a lot of humour on both sides (neither side gets to have all the jokes) even in really serious situations. However, there are serious situations that are not appropriate for humour, and these were not made funny in the movie.
Stay to the end of the credits. Not only is the music pretty good, the final scene is hilarious. No, it doesn't set up a sequel, but it does reference a humourous moment from a serious situation and it's pretty hilarious. No, I won't tell you what it is.

Yay, so that's a review and I really do need to do homework.
Summary: Go see it. If you're too broke, pirate it as soon as you can and try to ignore the weird non-western alphabet subtitles. It's worth it.

Forty Third Post

It is... getting late. I have one final left, at 15.30 Friday. And then I am done with Fall Term 2010. Done with 2010, really.
And then, of course, I go home Saturday before 0700. I am not pleased, but I'll get home quickly, I guess.
I don't remember if I mentioned it, but I can't have stimulants in the hours between waking up and falling asleep. Otherwise, I'm up until 0400 wanting to be asleep so badly, but totally unable to shut down my brain. I also don't remember if I told you all about the time I unwittingly drank green tea with mint in it the night before a german exam, but mint is the one thing I've found that never fails to knock me out mentally. It turns my brain to mush (green tea makes me hyper, so I was tripping pretty badly that night) and allows me to sleep.
I have a small hoard of mint tea now. Just mint, nothing added. It does the job.
I had to have three cups of it last night. First, I just couldn't fall asleep, so I had to make another around 01.30. Then. Oh, then what.
There was a f**king fire alarm at 3 f**king AM.
By the time I got back to my room at 03.30, I was wide awake from standing out in the sub-zero (Celsius) weather in pyjama pants, tank top, jacket, and hiking boots without socks for half an hour. Obviously, I started texting my friends angrily about how I was planning to kill whoever woke me up before an 0800 final. Then I made another cup of tea, grumbling angrily, and eventually fell back asleep.
I'm also a bundle of nerves from the odd behaviour of my course handbook. I'm planning to study abroad next year, but that's tricky as a science major. I need specific courses, so I'm fitting my schedule around those that I would prefer to take. Sure, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to take Developmental Biology instead of Advanced Cell Biology, but as someone who wants to go into disease research, I care more about the cellular and molecular level of things than the thing itself. Advanced Cell is far more interesting to me that Developmental would be, I think. I'd still graduate, and I'm sure I could take all the cell biology I wanted in graduate school, but I'd rather take it now and be able to know for sure if this is really what I want to do with my life.
My handbook lied to me. It's been giving me the wrong semesters for classes, and that's really important. So I've been emailing some biology professors, usually around bedtime, so I get nervous about whether I have the prereqs or the proper semester picked to travel.
Whoo. We'll see how this all pans out.
In the meantime, I'm going to ignore the fact that I have a final tomorrow (for the time being) and go to bed.
Goodnight.

P.S.
I've taken to wearing my pyjama pants to every final, and I definitely had a "I'm wearing my purple plaid flannel pants to class and you (the world at large) can't make me change!" moment. I love these pants.

Fortieth Post

First, I have discovered a few things on the internets.
1. Records of a Mad Scientist. JW, a biochemistry graduate student from Indiana, winds up teaching (which she never wanted to do) at a state school in America's Midwest.
2. Alex Day ("nerimon") on Youtube. Just a guy with a camera and internet access who is also a skillful singer-songwriter and a hilarious dude. Also, I have to say as an American that his accent is fascinating. I sometimes suspect that I have an unnatural obsession with British accents, but I think it might just be one of those "American things". Anyway, enough about my obsessions. Look up nerimon's channel on youtube. (the people to whom he links are also pretty cool)
Oh hey, you know that I'm American now. Oh, well.
3. The Legend of the Seeker. A scifi/fantasy television series about a normal guy thrust into another life by a prophecy. It's absolutely amazing, at least thus far, with good acting and a worthy script. See if you can guess who played the Mouth of Sauron from the extended version of the Return of the King (from Lord of the Rings, and if you really didn't know... I have nothing to say to you). All the episodes are up on Hulu because it ended, but why should I care? I don't have a television, not to mention cable/satellite/whathaveyou.
You may or may not know (I can't be expected to remember all I've told you, can I?) that I'm also obsessed with two other television shows- Heroes and Sanctuary. I think Heroes might be over, so all the seasons might be up on Hulu. Sanctuary is not over, Gott sei Dank, but it's on a very weird upload schedule.

I recall saying at the beginning of this blog that I had no interest in Harry Potter or Twilight, two things that seem to drag other sites down.
That is now a lie. I have read Harry Potter, and I enjoyed them immensely. Check out Mark Reads Harry Potter if you want a chapter-by-chapter review of all seven books; it's hilarious and enjoyable if you've already read the books. I have also-

I don't really want to tell you. It's kind of embarrassing.
Actually, I've told no one. Not roommate, not best friend (who I text because he's at another school), not close girl friend. I think I might even have the library people in the dark about it.
...not that I check it out, I just lurk back to my little study cubicle with no power outlet for my laptop (the darling thing) and then leave it there when it's time to go.

Nope, not telling. If you guess, more power to ya. You can win 10 internets.

Okay. So a funny thing that happened was I was in the Target near my school looking for... I think I was looking for chocolate, socks, and shampoo. Oh, and a Christmas present for my roommate. Anyway. My best friend is a freshman in college and an overachiever. I mean, the man wants to be a surgeon, so he kind of has to be an overachiever, but I think that high school was too easy for him. Now, however, he is in college.
I was just going along, browsing through random stuff, when I got a text message that made me laugh so hard that I had to sit down under a clothes rack.
Here it is, exactly as it appeared on my dumbphone screen.
"Ohmygoodnessit'sthu
rsdayandfinalsarene
xtweekpanictimei'mgoi
ngtofailatlifeandendu
pasabumonthestreet
sellingcracktokidstos
upportmyselfuntilthe
mexicanskillme"
(character limit)
"becauseidon'tspeaks
panishandallbecausei
failedmycalculusexam
firstquarteroffreshm
anyear!"

Picture me, sitting under a clothes rack in target, laughing at a text from my friend who is worried about becoming a bum selling crack to kids until mexicans kill him, all because he failed a calculus exam.
Well, you can't picture me because you don't have my picture. Okay. Picture a 20-year-old girl, er, woman now that I'm over 18 (and have been for two years...), with long brown hair, blue jeans, a green shirt, hiking boots, and a black jacket sitting under a clothes rack in target, laughing at a text from my friend who is worried about becoming a bum selling crack to kids until Mexicans kill him, all because he failed a calculus exam.
Poor guy. I gave up worrying about finals when the kids in one of my high school classes discovered that one would need to totally fail an exam worth 10% of the grade to really affect one's grade that much. Oddly, I do much better when I'm under pressure, so I'm not too worried.
Well, I am worried about the fact that most of my finals are at 0800 next week. I am not pleased one bit.
And now it's well after 0400 -- more like 0500 anymore -- and I was trying to reset my sleep schedule so that I won't die during my 0800 finals. Oh, well... So much for that. I'm still getting up at 1000 tomorrow to study for my hell classes.
Also, if you get a chance and you're as unfamiliar with German Christmas (or "Winter Holiday Season") traditions as I am, look up "Krampus" in Google Images.
Just Do It. You will never see Santa Claus the same way (get your filthy minds out of the gutter. I didn't mean it like that).
Okay. Goodnight. I do not even remember why I was writing this. But it's awesome.

Thirty Ninth Post

Hey, gang.

Sorry. One of my professor's email style is rubbing off on me.

Anyway, guess what!

That's right, I have a measly week until finals! They are all at 0800 except for the last one, which will be at 1530 on Friday 17 December.

Naturally.

In other news, I have a nomination for "sexiest thing (not person) ever"

Ready?

German accents.

Twenty Eighth Post

Ahoy!
I did not get enough sleep last night. It was a long night.
I am not really that coherent, but "eighth" is a really weird word.
Also, hypogynous flowers have the petals below the ovary. Epigynous flowers have the petals above. Perigynous means the petals are around the middle of the ovary.
I have random shoots of knowledge in my head now. I remember bits and pieces of everything, but not really enough to say I have a good grasp on anything.
I got to do calculus yesterday- well, today, but before I slept- because my friend couldn't do it and asked me for help. I miss calculus.
This, see, is how boring I am. I think calculus is fun. Fun! FUN!
At least I'm better than the kid who hasn't slept in 72 hours. He stole my seat in biology. I was not happy. But he didn't notice my glare since he was trying to stay awake. He "sees" the shadows moving.
I was going to nap after the biology exam, but I wasn't tired anymore... so I'm just going to keep going until my karate final, at which point I will be on such an adrenaline rush that IT WON'T MATTER.
Then I'll be done with class.
Until September.
I'm just going to go hide under my bed now.

Twenty Seventh Post

I may or may not have mentioned this, but I'm in an english class. It's for a gen-ed that I need to graduate, or I would not be in it. Actually, I'm glad that I am, because I learned that I like science better and that I really don't want to have to deal with the humanities more than I have to.

The class is called "Women Writers". It is taught by a poet (I went to her poetry reading for her new book- she's not bad). Poets- real ones, not "people who have a life and also write some poems"- are not scientists.

I like scientists. I like working through physics problems more than I like dealing with people problems; I prefer mathematical formulas to crowds of people. Biology is my one exception to that, but I'm really more into the cellular and molecular levels. Things that I cannot see with my naked eye but can find scientifically or mathematically...

It's funny, really. I look at the world in a totally new light now, after a year of college. I see the light outside my window- with current I and resistance R- blocking my view of the pine trees- gymnosperms, with three generations in each seed- that sit in the parking lot. I can tell you about the chemical reactions of the batteries in my drawer, and about the effectiveness of the bleach wipes against bacteria. I can move in such a way that, if my hands and feet encountered a person, that person could die. I see all this as a product of the efforts of countless women before me.

I am really not a feminist. The word has extremely negative connotations for me, evoking images of anti-men, bra-burning crazies. I am a very conservative person. I like it when boys open the door for me, and I fully intend to get married someday to a nice man who will safeguard me because that's what men are supposed to do. It's how they're made.

At the same time, I am realising that my being able to go to college and take courses in maths and sciences is the direct result of some crazy women. It's the radicals who make things happen. Were I born in another era, changes would not happen because of me. I have come to respect the radicals, even if I don't agree with their ideas or methods. That's not the point. I have a grudging respect for the fact that because of them, I am able to wear jeans and a t-shirt whenever I want. No skirt if I don't want it. I don't have to take courses that are deemed appropriate for women. I can take any course I want, be anything I want to be when I grow up.

This respect for the radicals is the result of my english class. It's shocking, I know, but the diversity credit really did end up broadening my view of the world.

But now that class is almost over, and all I have to do now is come up with a presentation, write a five-page paper, and read a poem out loud.

There is one thing that I hate more than people, and it's reading my own poems out loud (I am one of those "people who have a life and also write some poems", or would be if I had a life). This may very well be the hardest final of my life.

Okay, so that wasn't a horribly boring post. But my first year of college will be over soon, and I am looking back on it with some nostalgia already.

Twenty Sixth Post

Ah, the joys of a university with a semester system. I get out of school before my high school's prom, for crying out loud.

It's weird.

Granted, I'm just a freshman, but I'm also 16 days away from my last final.

This is a good thing. It signals the last physics final of my life, possibly the last time I ever have to read a poem out loud in front of 25 other people, most of whom I don't really know, and the first of many chemistry finals. I have no doubt that my situation will not improve in the chemistry department, but it really can't get any better than not reading poems out loud and not taking physics.

Scratch that, it can. I could not be in a class with stupid people.

Have I posted about stupid people? I might have. I shan't rant for too long.

But seriously, have you (i.e., the amorphous cloud of readers that doesn't exist, other than some brazilian agency checking to see if my site is "up or down". I think they might have interns, personally. Really, really bored interns.) ever had a class with a stupid person? They are the ones who ask the questions that everyone else quietly answers in their head or by looking in the book. Or that would be answered within ten minutes even if they had not asked. At the 100-level classes, the professors don't actually assume that you know everything. They assume you read the material, which may or may not be true, but they do not assume you are a clairvoyant genius. That, I believe, comes later. For guys, it might come when you get married.

Ahem.

Also, sorry about that parenthetical paragraph in the middle of my sentence. But it's after 23:00 on a tuesday night, and this week is only going to get longer. Deal with it.

Speaking of longer week, a leadership class containing a close friend from church and school who now goes here is running an awareness/money raising event for Haiti. "Goats and Magic and Get Hungry For Haiti!" or something to that effect. I am participating in the two-day fast (Get Hungry) and going to the magic show because I don't actually do anything on Friday nights. The fast is from Wednesday lunch- if it cuts me off before my english toffee latte and raspberry scone, there will be consequences- to Friday dinner. Nothing from the dining hall, the cafe, or the coffee shop. Luckily, I have been stocking up on orange juice. I can live on it for limited amounts of time. And they're giving us rice.

Very civil of them, really. If they're going to take away meal plans, the least they can do is give me rice. I am decidedly fond of rice, especially with properly-done stir fry or in decent fried rice. But plain rice will suffice in lieu of food.

Likewise, they're giving us Starbucks ®, ™, ©, or whatever should follow a company branding. Not really sure, but I don't want them to sue me. I have no money. But I suspect that its just black coffee, which, I may have stated on a previous post, gives me a hangover. No need to get into that.

Really, what I need to get into is writing a paper that is due in a week and a half, doing a research project that is due in a week, or preparing for any number of classes in the morning. (For the record, I already did and gave up on physics homework)

With that in mind, I will cease typing my heart out to the cold, uncaring internet.

Cheers.