Saturday, November 15, 2008

Poem for Saturday

Madame, Withouten Many Words
By Thomas Wyatt


Madame, withouten many words,
Once, I am sure, ye will, or no:
And if ye will, then leave your bourds,
And use your wit, and show it so,

And with a beck you shall me call,
And if of one that burneth alway
Ye have any pity at all,
Answer him fair with yea or nay.

If it be yea, I shall be fain;
If it be nay, friends as before;
Ye shall another man obtain,
And I mine own and yours no more.

--------

It was still rainy and dark and gloomy on Friday, but I had a nice day anyway. I got to have lunch with Gblvr at Lebanese Taverna, meaning I had excellent hummus, then we walked around to As Kindred Spirits and Ulta where I had to struggle to be virtuous and not spend money. (Why must Jessica Simpson keep putting her name on perfumes that are sweet and light and dessert-delicious and have staying power -- I don't want to give her any money but I am so tempted to buy Fancy.) When I got home I wrote my review of "Suddenly Human", then worked on a free Snapfish photo book that Gblvr told me about and that thankfully now has a later deadline than Sunday!


Here are a few more photos of Homestead Farm earlier in the autumn.


Apparently captive chickens will lay during any season.


Whereas I doubt the goats are allowed to climb over the tractors on their walkway when it's icy.


Lots of sparrows hang around the pens picking up spare food.


This adorable calf will be a cow by spring.


I believe this is a pheasant, though it may be some sort of long-tailed partridge.


Some of the farm's scarecrows guard the stand with apple cider, hot dogs and fries.


Even the weathervane has an animal theme.


Fannish 5: List your five favorite love triangles.
1. Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot, The Mists of Avalon
. Yes, I realize that the story is much, much older than that, but Marion Zimmer Bradley's resolution is by far the best.
2. Jack Aubrey/Diana Villiers/Stephen Maturin, Post Captain. After almost fighting a duel that both men have justified as not really relating to the triangle, they all make up and eventually become cousins by marriage.
3. Luke Skywalker/Leia Organa/Han Solo, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Shut up, we didn't know she was his sister then, and when she kisses Luke to make Han jealous on Hoth, it's totally hot -- if someone other than George Lucas had been producing, there could have been an awesome three-way right there.
4. Jack Sparrow/Elizabeth Swann/Will Turner, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. The only thing that could make this hotter is tossing naked James Norrington on top, or on the bottom.
5. Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler/Jack Harkness, Doctor Who. Okay, this was really more of a threesome than a triangle -- I feel certain that any of these two would have been willing to share with the third -- but the awesome sweet sexy dancing factor demands their inclusion.

My evening consisted of folding laundry while watching TV -- spoilers. Crusoe wasn't my favorite -- I know cannibals are a staple of desert-island literature and canon in Dafoe, but there are so many stereotypes being perpetuated there that not even Friday can compensate. I do love the backstory on Robinson's troubles in England that led him to the island, and the backstory on Friday and his father as well. After that we watched Sanctuary, which is not a really good show -- not as good as Crusoe in many ways and overly influenced by both comics and Heroes -- but it has two female characters I like, which makes up for a lot!

There were lots of cliches, both the vampires (boy, it didn't take them long to go there) and the unnaturals being made as well as born, which is like the elder cabal of Heroes set a century earlier. I snickered a lot at the line about how Tesla cheated Marconi. And Tesla uses electricity to pass himself on -- it's not far off The Prestige! And I also love the idea of Helen as a feminist at Oxford, railing at not being able to take classes, and that Ashley guessed for herself that John is her father.

Then we watched the late rerun of SGA, which seemed kind of slow to me but that might just be because I was TVed out at that point. My favorite moment by far was early on when Ronon said that sometimes he walks by Woolsey's quarters at night and hear him crying, and Rodney asked, "Really?" and Ronon said, "No." And then Rodney got soooo upset that Sheppard was staying overnight on the planet with a hot astrobiologist! And then John's subconscious decided he'd rather be beaten up by a dead colleague than seduced...there is tons of fodder for both psychoanalysis and fanfic there. But I am irritated that yet again the writers went out of the way to make us dislike a high-ranking woman as an ambitious, over-reaching bitch. I wish I had some sense that I'll really miss this show when it's gone. But knowing that Friday was the last day of shooting ever for Boston Legal and that Pushing Daisies is days away from cancellation, it's just not distressing me the same way to lose SGA.

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