Pansy: July 2007 Archives

Yesterday we were having fun with the whole Simpsonize Me website. Some of the characters looked pretty typical and others looked a lot like my kids.

For example, Berylla Moss:

My teenage daughter desperately wants this skirt. I told her there is no way anyone is spending $38 on that. She wants to use her own money, but her father (and I agree with him) believes $38 on that is still ridiculous.

So I suggested this pattern with a Hello Kitty! applique. You would have thought I suggested burlap as a feasible alternative. First she tried almost graciously to say "you, um, shouldn't have..." Then she said "can you make that skirt look punk?"

I cannot believe how old I am.

Anywho, she I think will give in, but if anyone can give advice on how to sew the skirt with "more punk" in it I would be much obliged. She wants to wear the skirt with this T-shirt (if they have it girl-cut of course).

WASHINGTON (June 30) - What to do now? School officials around the country are asking that question following a Supreme Court decision rejecting racial integration plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky.

The 5-4 ruling prohibited those district plans but didn't entirely shut the door on using race as a factor when making decisions about what schools should look like.

The ruling brought complaints that it allegedly betrayed the Supreme Court's most acclaimed ruling - the 53-year-old Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing segregated schools.

I don't know, up-down, in or out, black or white. My mother said it best in regards to this article:

Some scary times we live in. Whoever is trying to mandate this nonsense forgets that there are those of us who find slavery and segregation untenable. It always gets back the question of who decides. We have to be most wary of those who jump forward to make those decisions. Black and White. The US should have solved its racial problems generations ago.

Archbishop Mataca says democracy is not an end in itself but a means to higher goals which he says are freedom, good government, just laws and happy homes.

He says whatever the systems of governance, democracy in its various forms or socialism, it must be at the service of humanity.

Archbishop Mataca says if any of these causes people to oppress, discriminate and racially divide societies, they need to be reformed so happy homes become a reality for Fiji’s people.

Thanks to my brother Ed for the HT.

We saw The Transfomers last night and it sucked. OK, it was slightly better that I expected so let's get the good part out.

Optimus, who was voiced by the original Optimus, Peter Cullen, recited the above line and Rosey Posey said she thought she saw my eyes tear up. That was cool albeit totally pointless and a bone thrown at us nostaligic Transformer fans. The sell-out I am, I happily took the bone.

The other plus was the action scenes were really, really good.

So the negatives? It was mostly Shia LeBeaouf and his antics with his car, and getting the attention of a girl for like an hour before any action set in. There were lots of stupid little sex jokes that could have been dropped to make the movie more kid-friendly. On that same line of thinking, the violence could have been toned down a bit without any loss to the movie to give it a PG rating. I hated the sex humor although The audience laughed hysterically at it while I just rolled my eyes. So what do I know?

There also tghe usual mini-public service announcements strung throughout taking pokes at our government and Bush and what-not. Yawn.

The story was terrible, boring and incoherent. Many of the situations could have been resolved with common sense. For example, there is one action scene that ensues because instead of putting Sam and his Lady Friend inside his cab and driving away with the rest of the Autobots, Optimus decides to put them on his shoulder and climb under a bridge...and drops them. Why? What for? No one knows.

The robots looked kind of icky. Michael Bay's attempt to recreate this alien-robotic-life form and thought the boxy Transformers looked "unrealistic". OK I got that. But um, there is nothing realistic about Transformers to begin with (why must we take everything so seriously lately?) He should have established some middle grown and made them look slightly more like the guys we remember. They were literally confusing to look at-just jumbles of metallic spikes. Rosey Posey was kavetching for two hours afterwards about why did they feel the need to give Megatron pointy teeth: "To show how evil he is while he eats small bunnies?"

Mostly, something was seriously missing with the Optimus character. I am still not sure what it was. He seemed slightly ditzy and silly or something.

The movie is obviously a set-up for a sequel.

I give it a C-.