Really wicked links follow: it’s easier to put them in a comment than get the fancy-shmancy link button to work in the regular post.
how to waste time
by CJ | Jun 5, 2010 | Journal | 52 comments
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http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ is a good one. And Jigzone http://www.jigzone.com/ is another.
Getting started on Bleach is good. There are hundreds of episodes. We just finished all 12 disks of The Pallisers, an adaptation of a sprawling Victorian novel, available on Netflix. There’s summer entertainment for you, if you like parlor drama and a leisurely approach to plot. How we are simultaneously addicted to Bleach and watching The Pallisers is a good question, but that’s us.
Getting started on Oblivion is good. High replayability. I tried Dragon Age and was mortally disappointed. But the best is still Might and Magic VI.
Dig up your front lawn. That’s good for hours and hours of entertainment.
And there’s the even deadlier http://www.ancestry.com/security/deny.aspx?sub=1473811163671&dbid=1030&spotId=24&url=http%3a%2f%2ftrees.ancestry.com%2ftree%2f14038397%2fperson%2f44777170%2fcomments#bc-2143617560 which will give you free entry until you’re hooked.
And http://icanhascheezburger.com/ which is also the gateway to loldogs, the kludge page and the fail blog, which are worth a visit; and slightly racier, the Engrish page, for any of you who have ever traveled…or appreciated Deana Hanks’ command of Ragi.
Sneaky you putting in the Ancestry link. For associates not in the US try the local sites: Ancestry.com.au, Ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.ca (English and French). There’s also a NZ site and I think French, German, Italian and Swedish. The links to the local sites are on the bottom right of most Ancestry pages.
The Pallisers is an adaptation of several novels by Anthony Trollope, the prolific and now out of favor Victorian novelist. It was great while I was in bed recovering from leg surgery but I fear a more mobile audience might run from the room. Many shots are held ling enough for you to start admiring the beautiful wood work on the walls of the sets.
Phil Brown
Oblivion was wonderful. I’ve not tried Dragon Age though my hubby agrees with you. We both miss the Might and Magic games. They are grand! I’ll have to try the series you recommended…if my sons ever let me turn off the Doctor Who!
You’re watching Bleach! OMG. ;P I made it through about 80 eps before giving up on the filler plots, but that first plot arc – very nice. I’ve passed on most of my memorabilia from my fannish zealousness except for a couple of Renji figures and keychains.
The problem was that the series production began to overrun the writer, as I recall. They started into the ‘hollow world’ sequence without enough material to finish, and after some desperate wheel-spinning and recap, did the unheard-of and honorable thing, announced they were going to break off and tell other stories, but would be back to that timeline (once the writer had caught up.) I have not gotten that caught-up sequence yet, but we intend to as soon as we have time from digging up the front lawn and other items.
Others we like: Descendants of Darkness, Gravitation, Kyo Kara Maoh, and very very especially, Saiyuki. We are in love with Son Goku and Hakkai. Not to mention the dragon. For totally different reasons. 😉
We love, besides these, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility; not so much Jane Eyre—never has been a version we like. We put on Pride and Prejudice every time we feel as if the world is going too fast for us. Our Halloween movie is Johnny Depp in Spooky Hollow, and our Christmas movie is Kate Hepburn and Peter O’Toole in The Lion in Winter.
We have a fish named Renji. He got his name from always being missing at roll call (feeding), always noshing in the skimmer basket, always being the odd man out.
I have the first two box sets of Bleach and then watched further through hulu…but yeah, I think the manga (where the real writer tells the story) went slower than the anime so the anime did its own thing while waiting for the manga to catch up… and it wasn’t so good. Most anime has this problem of “filler episodes” where they tread water and the story quality plummets while they wait for new material from the manga, but Bleach had so much of it. There was a point where the main characters were running towards a castle or something and it just went on episode after episode, castle never getting any closer. I put it aside and I just couldn’t be bothered to find out when the filler episodes finally ended again. The first two box sets were fun enough though and complete the story introduced in the beginning.
My favorite series right now is Naruto and later Shippuden when the kids are all grown up. That show is epic and has yet to let me down. It starts off with a bunch of kids with their tiny battles and as they grow older the ‘verse they live in expands as does the consequences. It’s also one of those shows with multiple generations of characters. You got the kids, and then the young adults, and the older generation and they all have their stories and perspectives even though in the beginning the viewer mostly understands the conflict from the perspective of the kids. By the time you get to Shippuden and the kids are now grown up and fighting the adult battles it is very satisfying to have gone through that process.
I would also add Persuasion (Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds) and Emma (Gwyneth Paltrow). I am enough of a Miss Austin devotee to have the books at hand as I watch.
Others we enjoy Best if Youth, Angels in America.
We also like to do our own film festivals….we find a theme, a writer, a director we like and follow through
I’ve watched everything you’ve mentioned, and they’re all entertaining for various reasons; Saiyuki is a favorite of my best friend. My favorite character is Hakkai and hers is Sanzo. I hesitate to recommend unasked and based on a small sampling, but from personal experience in recommending anime to friends, the following are very good: Ouran High School Host Club (genderbending, bishounen, slashability), Twelve Kingdoms (strong female character who actually learns from her mistakes, fantasy, world building), Genshiken (self-referential: anime fans, social commentary, humor) and my current favorite: Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan (currently available on youtube: unlimited bishounen, Japanese historical). For something on the edge stylistically and plot-wise: Mononoke (looks like animated sumi-e).
If you haven’t watched the Onmyoji movies, I think you’d really enjoy them, even if they’re a bit cheesy.
I rewatch Jane Austen adaptations constantly; I think I have 4 different versions of Pride and Prejudice (including Bride and Prejudice) and most versions of anything ever adapted to any of her books. The Colin Firth P&P is good, and there’s one BBC one from the 70’s that I like watching now and then. Something comforting about them. I’d recommend the Peter Wimsey “movies” featuring Harriet Vane as the viewpoint character. They’re what I go to after Jane Austen. (I reread the books a lot too: Gaudy Night and Busman’s Honeymoon in particular).
Pride and Prejudice fans also have to watch Lost in Austen, wherein a 21stC girl who’s read the book too many times accidentally gets swapped with Elizabeth Bennet and has to struggle to keep the story going the “right” way …
Lost in Austen always struck me as someone having read the Friday Next books and then picked up Pride and Prejudice and had a “moment” and lo a film was born.
Yipes! Thanks for the suggestions, but I have enough trouble keeping on track as it is.
It is 5:21AM here and I have not slept since yesterday.PTSD is a constant companion. After staring at the ceiling till 3AM, I decided to give up and do something productive. But your choices are limited in the middle of the night. So I have been typing away on my manuscript and decide to take a break to watch the sun come up. Then stopped by here to, you guessed it waste time. Back to work…
Uh-oh! Just looked quickly at Bleach! This could become A VERY BAD HABIT! We are going to *try* to wait for the colder months to get into this one!
Meanwhile we are doing a FoodFilmFestival…. on the list so far… Eat,Drink,Man,Woman; Babette’s Feast, Big Night, Ratatouille, Sideways, (Okay, it’s wine, but what would food be without it?) Julie and Julia….. there are others I can’t think of at the moment.
Second time around for this. You have actually *hit* submit if you want the message to post!
Add Like Water for Choclate to the FoodFilmFestival
I’ve seen a few episodes of Bleach but it never became a habit for some reason.
Ancestry.com is fun though. I used to work for them. It was in a call center, though, and was not a fun job (I handled calls that were for the AOL customer rewards program. I was SUPPOSED to get transfers that had gotten a good experience and who had agreed to the transfer. But I can’t tell you how many transfers I got mid-cuss word). It’s amazing how lost I can get in census records.
Bleach is a large, sprawling, extremely convolute plot with characters that pop in and out forever. It starts with a teenaged kid having a fight with some bullies that have knocked over a sidewalk memorial to a dead girl, and spreads clear to the world of the dead and back.
ANYBODY who mans the phones at anything gets exasperated callers: having done that job myself, for a photography studio on phone sales (the shame!) I have some sympathy for the people, and I try to keep the lid on frustration.
Ancestry: Oh, yeah: Tulrose and I both have keyed for them, as part of the online community, and you get so absorbed in the little village church as you take notes on babies you see born and get married and then your people die and are buried, and you watch the parish priest replaced, because the handwriting changes—it’s quite affecting, honestly.
In one of them I’m doing the marriages are a real pain. The priest had what seems like a dozen children and as soon as they could scratch their name they were a witness to the marriage and every last one of them has to be transcribed into the notes field (FreeReg.co.uk has a notes field for stuff just noted in the register). You also see sad burial entries such as “man found in field” and the babies are enough to break your heart.
Yep, pre-celibacy rule. I had a few strays ‘found on road’, too, and one of them right before an outbreak of the plague, right after they’d charitably buried the person. You know there’s a sad story there. Or more than one where elderly husband and wife died on the same day. You can about figure housefire: there was so much live flame in these straw-roofed, old-wood dwellings, and as people got older, they might bump something over, or catch a skirt in the fire, or spill the cooking grease. Sad, sad way to go.
I remember from when I was doing research for my thesis that some studies of old celtic roundhouses with wattle and daub construction and those pitched, conical thatch roofes would go like gang-busters. On reconstruction caught because they had the fire in the central fire pit a tad excessive and a spark caught in the thatch. Folk barely made it out — it was totally engulfed in about 10 seconds. They decided that open doors could be a real problem too and the use of an acutal smoke hole would be suicidal — creates too much updraft, greater likelihood of sparks meeting thatch, and drips putting out the fire; smoke draws just fine without the hole and the slow filtering of the smoke dries things out from the inside and also helps keep the vermin load down.
I love Trollope. I believe that I have on my shelves nearly everything he wrote. He approached the topics of love, money and marriage from every possible perspective. I think I read somewhere that he used to go for long long walks through the fields composing on the hoof as it were, gesticulating as his characters uttered through him, then would go back home and write it all down. It is very SATISFYING to read his books. I haven’t watched the dramatizations. As my 9 year old says about Harry Potter, the books are nearly always better than the movies, as this thread suggests 🙂
Have you all read Georgette Heyer? I used to think she was a bodice ripper, until I read a few, then I realized she was our century’s Trollope/Austen with a wicked comic twist, and not a bodice ripped among them. Try Cotillion – I think it is my favorite, but as there are about 35 to pick from one need not feel cornered in to a selection. I laughed out loud so many times.
Over a dozen Trollope novels are on Project Gutenberg. I sampled one to check out the style, and it’s delightfully modern, all things considered. Good reading ahead.
I’ve got a bunch of Trollope on my Kindle and would have Georgette Heyer there if it were possible. Have you read “Lord John”, her final and most scholarly book. It was published after her death and ends just where she left it, in the middle of a chapter.
Georgetter Heyer is why I began reading Jane Austin. (BTW, I only recently found out that that it’s pronounced *hair* not *higher*) For a thrilling historical book read Royal Escape…..Miss Heyer’s take on Charles II when he was on the run after Cromwell defeated the king’s forces. I know how the story ends but it had me on the edge of my seat….a page turner! 😮
DH and I have been on a Napoleonic Era kick for the past several years (hence the crewing on a tall ship bit), although lately we’ve been drifting back towards sci-fi. We discovered the Sharpe’s Rifles series, following the exploits of one Richard Sharpe of His Majesty’s 83rd Rifles, the ‘Chosen Men’, the British Empire’s equivalent of the Dirty Dozen. Sharpe has been elevated from the ranks of the common soldier for rescuing Lord Wellington from an ambush; it now remains to see how much farther he can advance on native cunning and courage without noble birth. The novels are by Richard Cornwell; the series stars Sean Bean as Sharpe. It’s a running joke that Sharpe will kick some bad guy in the crotch at least once in every episode; his Riflemen are known for fighting dirty, as well as being the best marksmen in the Peninsular Campaign.
Another good PBS mini-series is To the Ends of the Earth, based on a book by William Golding, who also wrote Lord of the Flies. It follows a young Englishman, a minor noble, who has been posted to the Governor’s office in Australia shortly after the Napoleonic War. The entire story is their ship’s several month long voyage, the interactions of passengers and crew, and the perils of crossing such an expanse of sea even when you weren’t in imminent danger of being shot.
Big fan of Sharpe. If you haven’t already, try Horatio Hornblower, very Sharpe-like, except of a ship.
You’ve surely seen the newest Horatio Hornblower series on the Beeb, and also read the books. Addictive. And Gryffyd is very scenic.
Plus, if you haven’t found them, the Patrick O’Brian novels, starting with Master and Commander, are a delight—think of a male Jane Austin with a seafaring bent. You’ll want to get a diagram of a British period warship to have on hand while reading, or you won’t know a jackstay from an orlop; but it’s absolutely a wonderful series. I have followed the Sharpe novels (and earlier series) with great pleasure. The later ones are not as well produced. But the early tv ones are really fine.
[ 😆 Xenophon, our comments crossed!]
Heh. “Sir, you have debauched my sloth!” (on Dr. Maturin discovering that Capt. Aubrey, and the officers in his mess, have gotten one of his specimens drunk.)
I agree that the Gruffydd redo of Hornblower was very fun!
Ooops! Use thy mighty moderator powers and kill my comment, its your blog after all. This is the joy of Duel monitors, I have your blog up on one while I work on the other.
Love, love, LOVED the Hornblower books and series (Ioan Gryffydd is a nice bit of yum). The O’brian books are great too – the ones I bought DID have a warship schematic in the front at it is, indeed, a necessity. I’ve not yet read the Sharpe books but the Sean Bean series is quite good. Something about series with boys and things that go boom….
I read almost the entire series of Alexander Kent’s “Richard Bolitho”. somewhat in the vein of the Hornblower series, of which I have all of those. Kent’s series also shows the brutality of naval warfare during the Napoleonic Wars, as well as the human side of even the lowliest seaman. Still, there is plenty of personal tragedy to go around, not only for Bolitho, but his crew, his friends, and the officers who command him.
I have to admit, I really liked the series with Ioan Gryffyd (is he Ilefinian????), and the actor who portrayed Captain Sir Edward Pellew was very good in the camera’s eye. Well, okay….I just liked the character he portrayed.
There is a book called Eyewitness to History. It has eyewitness accounts from various periods and places. A couple are from naval warfare of that era. It is very brutal, and I was surprised to find out that they had some women aboard ships. I always thought that was a big taboo.
Now and again the captain’s wife. Plus of course the notorious Anne Bonney and Mary Read. The pirate Calico Jack had a penchant for ladies aboard ship. They were smarter than he was—and one of them may have survived prison.
One more tidbit — I’m reading the story of the Flying Cloud, the clipper ship that set the speed record for passage from Boston to San Francisco. 89 days under sail, and it took more than a century for that record to be bettered. The notable thing was that her navigator was the captain’s wife; Eleanor Creesy was one of the many ‘Renaissance Women’ of the period, and fully versed in the most current navigational techniques of the day, as well as a equal partner to her husband aboard ship.
Definitely on merchant ships…
On warships, the crews were often rough, no few ‘pressed’ into the crews, or assigned by a judge…and of course cannonballs are no respecters of persons. Plus sanitary arrangements on a warship were open air.
I just went back to our Hornblower box set, and Robert Lindsey played Captain Pellew. Sir Edward was a real person, and was well regarded by the Admiralty. Hornblower was actually based on yet another real person, Lord Cochrane, for those who are sticklers for authenticity.
Dunno about Ilefinian, but Mr. Gruffydd is Welsh! When he’s not ‘in character’, his accent makes him almost incomprehensible to a non-Welshman. It’s remarkable how it vanishes, especially when he does American-English.