Let's go back to the beginning and see if we can't break through this with minutia and the ordinary.

Because it just aired here in the States last night, I'm going to give you my "Scandal in Belgravia" theories, i.e. why it didn't bother me as much as some people, even though I can see their complaints.

( Needless to say, spoilers. )

Okay, so that's what I think. They don't spoon-feed you the subtext, but I think it makes sense. I could be wrong.

The Avengers is basically awesome. Not Cabin in the Woods awesome (lol), but pretty darn awesome. I think the nicest thing I can say is that it's a very solid piece of work, by which I mean I can think of nothing bad about it (not even Scarlett Johanssen). It has moments that are good, and it has moments that are great; I enjoyed the pacing and the action sequences and the chemistry, and the plot wasn't too hard to follow, but it wasn't boring or stupid either. It has moments my brother thought were a bit cheesy but which just seemed to me funny and fan-service-y. That was just a function of our different levels of knowledge going in. For instance, here's ( a spoiler ridden exchange we had at the end of the movie... )

Another nice thing I can say is that I enjoyed all the performances, especially Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner. I like Edward Norton as an actor, but his interpretation of the character didn't really make an impression; whereas I really want to see more of Ruffalo's version. (Granted, Ruffalo was in a much better movie than Norton, which couldn't have hurt.)

And make sure you stay ALL THE WAY TO THE END. Most of the people in our theater - which was pretty full - immediately got up and left when the credits started (and they're snazzy credits at that). Maybe a third at best caught the mid-credits scene, which is actually kind of important, franchise-wise. But the final post-credits scene, I'm not sure there were 10 of us left.

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Fringe tonight made me happy and sad and confused and excited. The finale is upon us! But also ( this upsetting thing happened! )

Also, also, can I just say how excited I am that Fringe got renewed for just enough episodes to wrap up the story? Yippee!

Oh hey! May 5th is Free Comic Book Day!

My brain is fairly empty. It occurs to me that I haven't posted in over two weeks. And I keep setting the bar lower! And yet to no avail.

I consider myself a creative person, but I haven't had much to show for that in the last year. I've hardly even knitted, and that's more craft than art (because I'm following patterns; someone else did the art part earlier).

We got a new lady at work a few weeks back, and she kind of puts us all to shame with her beautiful displays. They were a little too boutique for me at first - her previous store was much smaller - but she's quickly adapted, and already been promoted. And she deserves it! (There was another candidate whose been there longer, but lost out, I suspect, because she already has so much on her plate, and a third that, bless her, nice girl, but I do not think she has the work ethic necessary, not yet.)

I want to let her energy inspire me. All my favorite artistic people are polymaths. And polymaths often become my favorite artists: I spent a whole morning recently watching videos from Voltaire on Youtube, because I had no idea how many different projects he's involved in. He's fascinating! I was disappointed to learn that the MMORPG he's involved with is not one of the several my brother often can not be pulled away from. (Probably because it's not free.) I want to buy a Deady "This is not bootleg! We no make!" figure (Also because it reminds me of Gloomy Bear, and I don't know what happened to my Gloomy Bear stuff.)

And I might be able to soon, because i_am_not_mad finally got a job! We'll soon have more money coming in than going out! Barely, but still. So I can get some of these, and these maybe, more of this, this, this, a bit of these, these as necessary (not at full price, but when they put stuff on sale, they really put it on sale). There's a lot of crap I want, basically. And now I can dream of it with much less guilt.

I may have something more to write this evening, because we're going to see The Avengers! I hear it's good!

I'm in a "chin up, old chum" mood, which is good, because the alternate reaction is a black, wallowing hole of depression. But hey, I saw a really great movie last week! (But boo, I can't afford to drag my brother along to a second viewing any time soon.)

The Cabin in the Woods is one of the best movies I've ever seen. Maybe the best horror movie, but that's hard to say, because in order to do what it does, for the viewer, you need to be a horror fan. Not because it's meta in the sense of "nudge nudge, wink wink, see what we did there"; but because you have to be familiar with the tropes in order to appreciate when they're being used against you.

Because, basically, what this movie does brilliantly is lull you into a false sense of security, repeatedly, when you think you know better. You think, "Oh, so that's the twist," but no, it's this other thing - but actually it's really this other thing. You recognize Steps A and B of Sequence X, so you know what's coming next - no, haha! you don't! It kept me on the edge of my seat. It kept me scared, something few horror films do*.

In conclusion, you should all go see The Cabin in the Woods. Unless you don't like horror movies, in which case, this is not going to help; you should stay far, far away.

*Not helpful: in a nearly empty theater, almost an hour into the movie, this man suddenly sits one seat over from me. Like, what the hell? I'm already full of nerves and now I have to worry about some genuine creepo spoiling my movie? (I'd decided against bringing my brother along against his will, and at that moment, was really regretting it.) I did have a good seat though. So I did the only polite thing I could think of: quietly pulled my keys out of my purse and held them in my fist, on the off chance that I might need to defend myself. About 20 minutes pass, and just as abruptly, the guy gets up, crosses in front of me, so now I've got to pick up my purse and scooch back, and just leaves. He was, like, this bald little old man. Maybe he walked into the wrong theater? Maybe he was a creepo, but the movie just freaked him out a little too much?

I just finished The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits. I started it this morning. I had today off from work because of the holiday. I also managed to flip through my Reader (only 67 items today, because of the holiday), watch Light Sleeper (which it occurred to me, I've been wanting to watch for 20 years; I remember seeing the ads on TV when it was in the theater), and run to the grocery store for Doritos, which I had a strange craving for. So it's not like I have to make a super special effort to just read a book; only a regular one. I still have it in me to read 200+ pages in a day.

(One of my managers takes half a dozen books home at a time to read. When he repeatedly left one behind on the counter recently, I asked, "Weren't you borrowing this?" He replied that he'd meant to, but he'd grabbed something else. "Should I put this back then?" I asked, and he said no, he'd read it that night, as it was 'only 280 pages or something'. But then he forgot it again, so we reshelved it anyway.)

I keep telling myself that I need to read faster, especially as there are so many new things to read. And now I've proved I can!

Also, it's quite a good book. I still can't say for sure why the front is covered with bright, trippy flowers, but maybe that's part of why a bit of me wants to reread it already, sure that I've missed some fascinating detail. It's the story of a battle between professional psychics, and it's hard to tell if it's AU, what with all the expensive spas and clinics for victims of 'psychic attack' and 'negative energy', and the way 90% of the characters react to these ideas as entirely ordinary, or if it's just that the narrator and the people she interacts with are, for the most part, the sort of people who react to these ideas as entirely ordinary.

But anyway, it's got a great, distinct voice, and Julavits has an awesome way of making the mundane menacing, which I can not provide my favorite quotes as example - the downside of reading a whole book in one day (one of them was some otherwise innocuous noise sounding like the noise a puppy makes when accidentally kicked, 'both accusing and confused') - so you'll just have to trust me. I'd have marked them but it isn't my book to write in. Also, FORESHADOWING. Just enough that you can pat yourself on the back when you figure out what it means; as opposed to so vague that someone else has to explain to you "that's why the toast was so important on page 26!", but not so heavy-handed as to be virtually parenthetical (FORESHADOWING) at each occurrence.

In the meanwhile I am strolling through Occult America (which has such a light touch, it feels like a Cracked article), and dragging my feet in A Stranger Like You (which is really weird and confusing, and I hope I'll get to the point soon; I may be judging harshly, I'm only on page 82).