The River Green

The story takes place in a mythical Viking world where a young Viking teenager named Hiccup aspires to follow his tribe's tradition of becoming a dragon slayer. After finally capturing his first dragon, and with his chance at finally gaining the tribe's acceptance, he finds that he no longer has the desire to kill it and instead befriends it.

At first glance, the movie is concerning because it threatens to produce a generation of children who grow up with the impression that the Vikings are Scottish. They are not. Neither are the children of Vikings American. Why movies lack the ability to produce characters whose accents accurately portray the setting of the story is quite frankly perplexing. The Hibernian Island has a rich history of Viking settlements, whose decedents are part of the present population of Ireland. Scotland has a history of repelling most Viking raids. There is far more evidence that the Vikings fought dragons in Wales or Ireland than in Scotland. With that in mind, it is surprising that well-known Scotsmen would lend their talents to a project re-writes their history at best, slanders it at worst.

Having said that, the rest of the movie is absolutely great. It’s sometimes hard to tell what the motivating factors of the protagonist to change the centuries-old lifestyle of his Viking culture is. It seems that it might be his less than Viking stature and habitual clumsiness that make him an outcast from the rest of his people. A self-fulfilling prophecy could have contributed to his already outcast nature- thus paving the way for his eventual challenge to the status quo.

This might be a bit of a harsh treatment for an animated fantasy. It was cute. The dragons are awesome and the animation is outstanding. The story, I think, says a lot about following one’s conscience rather than blindly following a culture that ultimately undermines that conscience.

It was a good movie. I’m just long winded, and perhaps a bit droning.

Labels: movies

…was Christmas Day. I got everything I wanted without realizing it.

For the six weeks, we have been cleaning, moving, fixing, repairing, putting away, stacking, preparing, working, studying and hoping that everything would work out in the end. My goal was to finish what was the hardest term I have had to date in school. My last day was the Tuesday before Christmas. Midterms were right around Thanksgiving. We had a good Black Friday this year- we slept in a bit and spent the entire day watching college football. There were about six games in total. Christmas was a planned day of laziness.

The most outstanding reason for having our dinner on Christmas Eve was due to BBC America’s decision to broadcast- for the first time ever- the Doctor Who Christmas Special on Christmas. It was due to come on at 9pm sharp. Our dinners rarely end before 2am, so watching the special would have otherwise have been impossible. When we discovered that the 14 hours preceding the special would be filled with a Doctor Who marathon, we were pretty dead set on parking ourselves on the sofa and doing very little.

Doctor Who at the Proms was on for two hours, beginning at around 1pm. During that time, both Marieke and I drifted in and out of a state of sleep so restful and taken in such a comfortable environment, it was difficult to tell at times that it was all happening on the sofa. We had reserved a few movies from RedBox to watch on that day, mirroring our activity one year previous. When it was decided that we would savor our nest for the entire day, we both changed into even more comfortable clothes. Marieke found a particularly comfortable pair of ‘in-active’ bottoms (as opposed to the active bottoms I use during workout time)- plaid, soft, made of t-shirt material and oh-so perfect for lounging. I spent most of the rest of the day in these pants.

After the amazing and exceedingly good Doctor Who Christmas Special episode, we capped the evening off with about half the episodes from the sixth season of Weeds. This also mirrored the activities of last year. Having the laptop made watching the episodes quite simple and it was far easier to set up and watch.

It was truly a day of relaxation. Well deserved relaxation. We all need a day off- I was lucky to get two. For second Christmas (12/26)- a happily adopted Dutch tradition- we began the day by having brunch with a friend, whose New Year will begin with a deployment to Iraq. We did some shopping, taking just enough time outside our nest to avoid cabin fever. We did watch our movies and the rest of the sixth season of Weeds.

In a word, the last two days have been simply bliss. I do not want to let them go.

Labels: holidays

The last time I saw Dawn Zuckerman, Marieke and I were shopping at Wal-Mart for our new apartment (Wendover pl.) and Dawn was shopping at Wal-Mart for her stint in the Peace Corps. The very next time I saw her, it was just under 10 years later at the Starbucks on Murray Ave. Another successful reunification courtesy of Facebook.

True to expectation, she is saving the world, one refugee at a time.

We had so much in common, it was hard to tell where one of us began and the other ended. While drinking coffee and eating our lunch, it was as if no time had passed at all.

After helping me with mailing my Christmas cards, we parted with a date for lunch on the following Monday. It was nice to remember what it felt like to be 22 years old again. Few things are comparable.

Labels: friends

When this whole school thing began, I had such a clear picture of what I wanted to get out of it and what I was doing it for and what the end looked like. So much has happened since then. Almost everything in my life is different than the first day I started and almost nothing in my life is the same from 18 months ago. So much is different. So little is the same. I’ve lost so much and gained so much and I don’t know if I like what I have now or what I had then. It is almost impossible to fathom that I would ever have a chance at that life again… it was so fleeting and so finite- and I knew it would be- but maybe I didn’t want it to end, so I just kind of ignored how short it was going to be.

In this new version of what purports to be my life, I do have a small chance of something, but it is only a glimmer- an ember, barely able to hold on to its light. It is not the glowing bastion of hope and promise it first appeared.

My classes are about to end for the term, and then a very much needed two week break. Once again, the end of my contract is coming upon the end of my term and I have so much work to do for both. Yet all I can seem to do is sleep and play computer games. Or sit on the sofa and watch tv. Everything but, in other words. My focus is way off from where it needs to be and I hope I can look back on this and realize that it was all just the malaise before the storm.

I surprised myself by getting my Java project done, despite the heralding of doom by the instructor that it was the hardest assignment in the entire class. There was only a slight oversight on my part, but it was easily fixed and now all that is left is comments.

Oh… and Shannon is having her baby as I write this.

Labels: afflictions , classes