It seems I am stuck in a rut of writing about the same old stuff, namely What Film I Saw At The Weekend and The Pitfalls of Living in London. Well, having wracked my brains for some enlightening piece of news to share with you, I've decided today isn't going to be any different.
Although the hole in my bedroom wall has been illed in, there is now a big hole directly in front of my front door. When I say "in front" I mean roughly three inches from it, that is to say, if I open my door and absent-mindedly wander out into the street, as I tend to do, I am likely to fall in. It's quite a big hole, and when I came back from running on Saturday there was a man in a hard hat sitting in it, who grumblingly hauled himself out and dragged one of those blue plastic covers over it so I could safely get into my house, looking all the time as though I'd cleverly planned my run to coincide with his excursion into his hole, and thus pissing him off. I'm not sure what they're doing down there, although I assume it's something to do with the water, because we wole up on Friday morning to discover there wasn't any. Our bus stop is also still closed, with a huge empty pit in front of it which Camden seems to have given up on completely. This is Annoying.
So, the film of the week was "Nacho Libre", which I went to see not so much because I wanted to see "Nacho Libre", but because F wanted me to go away so he could finish hie dissertation. It was an odd film. The gist is a Mexican friar (who appears to have become a friar through no fault of his own) would much rather be a wrestler. So eventually, he goes off to become one, in secret (that is, he comes back to his monastery at night, nobody apparently having missed him in the meantime). He is fairly successful, and then, in a bid to impress the (slightly unconvincing) nun he has fallen in love with, he gives all his winnings to the monastery for the orphans who live there. Aw, bless. Nothing much happens with the nun, of course, she having made vows of celibacy and all that, though in one way or another everybody seems to live happily ever after.
I've worked out, alarmingly, I must spend around £150 a year on the cinema. I've seem 14 films so far this year... This is perhaps countered by the fact that, surely, the more films I see the fewer books I buy. I've just, however, finished reading Kazuo Ishiguru's "Never Let Me Go" (if you don't want to know the plot LOOK AWAY NOW.) This is possibly the only book that has ever given me proper nightmares. It's a clever idea, the basis being that the main characters are all clones who have been designed to donate their vital organs. It's a good book, and a good idea, but leaves all sorts of loose ends the writer doesn't remember (or bother) to tie up. For a start, there are all sorts of rumours early on about escapees (the clones all grow up in a sort of boarding school) meeting horrible deaths, but this is forgotten about: I would like to know if those rumours had any basis as well, and I suspect the characters, particularly as it's narrated in the first person so ostensibly one of the characters who brings it up in the first place, would like to know too. Then Ruth, a character who, in my opinion, is not much more than a conniving pain in the ass, has a bit of a tantrum and tells them all that they were cloned from drug addicts and prostitutes. Well? Were they? They never tell us that, either. Most of all, though, the "clones" give on average three donations before they die, and much of the book centres around their recovery from donations 1 and 2 etc. What I want to know is: why not just take all their organs out in one go? It seems to me a society callous enough to create a generation of clones in the first place wouldn't have any qualms over killing them off when it's time to do so and whipping their organs all out at once. (Note to self: IT'S ONLY A NOVEL.) Good book, though. If anyone wants to borrow it let me know, and I might actually feel as though I've got my £7.99's worth.
Although the hole in my bedroom wall has been illed in, there is now a big hole directly in front of my front door. When I say "in front" I mean roughly three inches from it, that is to say, if I open my door and absent-mindedly wander out into the street, as I tend to do, I am likely to fall in. It's quite a big hole, and when I came back from running on Saturday there was a man in a hard hat sitting in it, who grumblingly hauled himself out and dragged one of those blue plastic covers over it so I could safely get into my house, looking all the time as though I'd cleverly planned my run to coincide with his excursion into his hole, and thus pissing him off. I'm not sure what they're doing down there, although I assume it's something to do with the water, because we wole up on Friday morning to discover there wasn't any. Our bus stop is also still closed, with a huge empty pit in front of it which Camden seems to have given up on completely. This is Annoying.
So, the film of the week was "Nacho Libre", which I went to see not so much because I wanted to see "Nacho Libre", but because F wanted me to go away so he could finish hie dissertation. It was an odd film. The gist is a Mexican friar (who appears to have become a friar through no fault of his own) would much rather be a wrestler. So eventually, he goes off to become one, in secret (that is, he comes back to his monastery at night, nobody apparently having missed him in the meantime). He is fairly successful, and then, in a bid to impress the (slightly unconvincing) nun he has fallen in love with, he gives all his winnings to the monastery for the orphans who live there. Aw, bless. Nothing much happens with the nun, of course, she having made vows of celibacy and all that, though in one way or another everybody seems to live happily ever after.
I've worked out, alarmingly, I must spend around £150 a year on the cinema. I've seem 14 films so far this year... This is perhaps countered by the fact that, surely, the more films I see the fewer books I buy. I've just, however, finished reading Kazuo Ishiguru's "Never Let Me Go" (if you don't want to know the plot LOOK AWAY NOW.) This is possibly the only book that has ever given me proper nightmares. It's a clever idea, the basis being that the main characters are all clones who have been designed to donate their vital organs. It's a good book, and a good idea, but leaves all sorts of loose ends the writer doesn't remember (or bother) to tie up. For a start, there are all sorts of rumours early on about escapees (the clones all grow up in a sort of boarding school) meeting horrible deaths, but this is forgotten about: I would like to know if those rumours had any basis as well, and I suspect the characters, particularly as it's narrated in the first person so ostensibly one of the characters who brings it up in the first place, would like to know too. Then Ruth, a character who, in my opinion, is not much more than a conniving pain in the ass, has a bit of a tantrum and tells them all that they were cloned from drug addicts and prostitutes. Well? Were they? They never tell us that, either. Most of all, though, the "clones" give on average three donations before they die, and much of the book centres around their recovery from donations 1 and 2 etc. What I want to know is: why not just take all their organs out in one go? It seems to me a society callous enough to create a generation of clones in the first place wouldn't have any qualms over killing them off when it's time to do so and whipping their organs all out at once. (Note to self: IT'S ONLY A NOVEL.) Good book, though. If anyone wants to borrow it let me know, and I might actually feel as though I've got my £7.99's worth.
posted by RLS at 9:14 am
1 Comments:
didn't they make a movie like that with ewing mcgregor and pearl earing scarlet girl? i seem to remember something about that. why is it so scary, though, apart from the oddness?
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