At my age...

Nelly Bly made a solo trip around the world in less than 80 days for the New York World, beating Phileas Fogg's fictional record.

Radioastronomy grad student Jocelyn Bell Burnell observed an unknown signal from outer space; this resulted in the discovery of pulsars.

John Couch Adams became the first person to predict the position of a planetary mass beyond Uranus.

Johannes Kepler defended the Copernican theory and described the structure of the solar system.

Entrepreneur Ted Turner took over his father's billboard advertising business. He later launched CNN.

Tracy Chapman released her first album, winning three Grammies.

Scottish physician Mungo Park became the first European to reach the West African interior.

Edgar Allen Poe won a $50 prize for the story "MS. Found in a Bottle."

Noah Webster published a spelling book.

Isaac Pitman devised the first scientific shorthand system.

Security guard Frank Wills alerted D.C. police to the Watergate break-ins.

No, the paper's not done.

Which LOTR Woman are you?

I will diminish, and pass into the West. Or something.

E may come visit me this weekend! That has the potential to be either fantastic or quite awkward. I'm hoping it will be fantastic. Must lay in some vegan staples so she'll be able to eat. Lessee, soy milk, fruit sorbet, more baby carrots and similar snackables...

*stares into space*
*smacks self on forehead*
History, Kivrin! Think about history! Do not think about Moulin Rouge!

I do love the extras on the DVD. Especially when Baz and Craig start going on about the directions they didn't go with the script... Count von Groovie and his Gothic chateau, OH dear me...

I suppose I would already have noticed if I was going to be Craig Pierce when I grew up. Sigh.

I really must give Baz' Romeo and Juliet another try. Several people whose opinions I respect speak very highly of it, but I've never made it further than meeting Juliet. Not even to Romeo meeting Juliet. Several things have, however, suggested to me why I have such trouble with it, and why it might be very satisfying and interesting if I manage to watch the whole thing.

First of all, in one of Alec Guiness' memoirs (I think it's My Name Escapes Me, but it might be A Positively Final Appearance) he talks about going to see it for a second time, and raves about how Luhrman has translated Shakespeare into visual terms. When I read that, I thought, "Aha! That's why it irks me so! I'm an intensely verbal person, and the movie is trying to operate in non-verbal terms!" Later I heard several times (most recently on the Moulin Rouge dvd commentary track) that in each of the Red Curtain movies, there's a different element that's meant to keep the audience off balance and aware that they're involved in a theatrical enterprise. In Strictly Ballroom, it's the dancing, in Moulin Rouge it's the singing, and in Romeo and Juliet it's the language.

In all three movies, you have to make a leap at the beginning, when you realize "Oh, this isn't realistic, this isn't naturalistic, this is sort of bizzare and I've got to decide whether to accept it or not." I had no trouble accepting the dancing world or the singing world (perhaps because of my lifelong affection for musicals), but I have trouble with Shakespeare's language being treated as something similarly... alien. The idea, in the Red Curtain films, seems to be to use dance, song, or language to grab the audience by the throat and shout HEY! THIS IS NOT LIFE! WE'RE TELLING A STORY! But it seems so... in my small acting experience, the goal with Shakespeare was to never let your enjoyment of the sound get in the way of the sense. And it seemed that the actors in Baz's R&J were respecting neither the sound nor the sense.

Do-you-biteyourthumbatmesir?

Nosirbutidobitemythumbsir!

*shrugging* What??

Anyway. Will rent it and give it another try.