Entertainment

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Blogging Chicks Comment Challenge.

13 Comments Posted on June 5, 2007January 13, 2015 by Snoskred

I mentioned yesterday that I was setting myself a new blog commenting task.

So, there’s apparently 820 blogging chicks blogs. If I comment on 10 per day, this will take me 82 days. :) Just under three months. And, during that time surely more will be added to the blogroll.

I really don’t think I have the time for an all out comment assault like NaBloPoMo was, where I was doing 100 comments a day. Even 20 might be a stretch at the moment given everything on my plate. However, if I push myself to do 100 a day it will take me 9 days which is much more reasonable to me. I’ll have to see how it goes. I want to be able to keep on top of all my other projects as well – and keep up with my art, and watch at least two West Wing episodes a day.

If you are a blogging chick who has arrived here after I have commented on your blog and you would like to try challenging yourself to comment, you might want to bookmark this page – it has all the current blogs on it. Once you click on a link, it should change color which makes it easier to keep up with who you’ve read.

And, in honor of Paris Hilton going to prison, here’s a lovely a-ha song named Cosy Prisons which almost could have been written about her if you listen to the lyrics. ;) Enjoy! But be warned, once this song gets inside your head it’s going to be there for a while.. ;)

Remember what I said here about an a-ha secret? :) I liked the light show on this one though, and I already posted the live version of this song before.

Morten Harket from a-ha is on the list of men I love to watch, keep an eye out for that post coming to you as a surprise soon.. ;) I almost did it today but got sidetracked, the a-ha DVD’s are sitting here on my desk so I can take my own screenshots.

a-ha, challenges, music

What have I been up to today?

1 Comment Posted on June 3, 2007February 28, 2015 by Snoskred

Regular readers of this blog are aware that I have taken up art.

You may remember this painting I did recently, which I totally fell in love with.

I loved it so much that I decided I want to make several versions of it with different colors as the background. I’m doing 5 at once and as you see here four of them already have painted backgrounds, there is a white one you can see off to the side which is going to be red or pink, depending on how the paint mix turns out.

Five at once may sound excessive but it’s not – once each canvas has been painted the background color it is then time for the cardboard dragging. The last time I did that I had a lot of left over paint from the colors I mixed up so this time I want to try and make sure that does not happen so much. If I have 5 backgrounds ready to paint it is more likely I will have somewhere to put any excess paint. Given that I am not using cheap paints anymore I really want to be careful not to waste any.

The little pale green canvas you can see is not going to have paint dragged on it, it’s a new thing I wanted to try which is sticking a lot of sequins onto a canvas. It might turn out well. It might turn out to be a nightmare. We’ll see I guess. ;)

Oh, these arrived during last week – this is what I got in return for The Other Half’s laptop coming to me as a surprise. I just got up to season 4 in my rewatching of the West Wing and I am going to keep watching them in order until I get to season 6. It may be a few weeks before I can unwrap the crispy plastic from these DVD’s to watch them. I want to watch the Desperate Housewives *after* Season 6 of the West Wing.

Hopefully after I am done with all that DVD watching Season 7 will be out. The fabulous news is the release date for season 7 will be August the 8th so it seems my time plan will work out pretty well, I think. As long as I don’t watch most of Desperate Housewives in one day like what happened last time.

Also, we went to my parents house to make pizza and discussed the soon to be arrival of my Dad’s new car. He is very excited. I won’t lie to ya’all – I’m terrified about it. Firstly because it is a collectors type of car, there’s a limited amount of them being made, they are worth a lot of money to begin with and with this kind of car the worth will go up providing it is in excellent condition. If anything happens to the vehicle the likelihood of getting another one is pretty much zero. He’s been lucky to get this one. It has not even been made yet, by the way – it is due to be made sometime in the next two weeks.

Secondly, there has been a recent spate of car jackings in Sydney, so my Mum tells me. I believe this might be due to that STUPID tv show on fox 8 called “Dangerous” where they glamorised this kind of thing. So there’s going to be arguments on whether or not he can drive it there. I’d rather he did not and so would Mum.

Thirdly, you can’t just take this car to the shopping centre and park it there. Someone would ding it or scratch it or damage it in some way and that would be very irritating. So really I’m not sure where he’s going in this car, if anywhere at all.

Fourthly, both Mum and I think he should install some extreme form of car alarm. Preferably something that shouts “F*CK OFF” loudly if anyone walks within two metres of it. Ok, maybe that’s not likely to be on the market (but what a market there would be for it!) but you can get ones that tell people to step away from the vehicle. It might do more harm than good, though. So instead you’d want to install a gps tracker with a kill switch or something.

It’s a shame that when you get something nice, people want to take it away from you, or damage it in some way. I personally think he should hire an armed security guard to drive around in it with him and stand watch over the car wherever he leaves it but that could be because I want to kill, maim, and generally harm the person who put a dent in my door – I wrote this post about it back in November. I thought I was over it, but apparently not. ;(

cars, desperate housewives, Snoskred Art, The West Wing

Beyonce – Women we love to watch.

1 Comment Posted on May 29, 2007January 13, 2015 by Snoskred

I realised recently that I was being a bit.. sexist.. here on Life in the country, because I did not have any posts titled women we love to watch. So I think it is high time we did. There’s quite a few women I can’t take my eyes off, and Beyonce is one of them.

Now, I bring to you the wonderful delights of Beyonce. ;) Including Beyonce in a Bikini, especially for the guys reading this blog. I hope you enjoy it, if you do leave a comment and I’ll do more of these types of posts. ;)

She takes fashion risks often – but she really can wear almost anything and look great in it.

She has a love for fishnet stockings, especially on stage.

She seems to like to use her laptop in rather odd places. Now that’s really wireless – and great advertising for Apple!

Beyonce has arrived and departed from many airports. I actually saw her at the Adelaide Airport some years ago. She’s really short, even with incredibly high heels on. What was surprising was the amount of luggage that the entourage van collected long after the entourage had departed the airport. I’ve never seen so many bags, however they weren’t all for her, Destiny’s Child was on tour.

You wouldn’t want to be the person the bodyguard is looking at like that, I think. ;)

JayZ is looking pretty good these days, too. ;)

But not quite as good as Beyonce looks. She is gorgeous.

>My favourite song by Beyonce is Crazy In Love, which is old school Beyonce and has a brilliant video clip, in my opinion.

If you liked this post, make a comment. :) If I get enough comments, I might do a similar post for Kylie Minogue and a few of my other favourite ladies soon..

If you’d like to see some of the Men we love to watch posts, click here for Rob Lowe and Christian Slater.

music, Women I Love To Watch

Farewell Rosie.

Leave a comment Posted on May 26, 2007January 13, 2015 by Snoskred

Rosie O’Donnell has left The View. As little as 64 days ago I said here on this blog that I didn’t like her, but much like Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, my view on Rosie has changed recently. I have a little secret to tell you. I’ve been watching The View at lunchtimes instead of the West Wing for about two months now and it’s all because of Rosie – and I have got to know, like and respect her.

She is a strong woman and people never take that well, as I am well aware. ;) She says what she thinks and she means it, and she stands her ground. People attack her – fox news really like attacking her, and I honestly have no respect for that entire tv channel now, not that I had a great deal before. People in the US should understand that most of us get Fox, and it represents itself as fair and balanced but it is not, and it is one more thing that is turning people against America across the world.

So I’m going back to watching the West Wing, the other half will be thrilled because he says the women on the view are noisy and all talk over each other. The show won’t be the same without Rosie, and it’ll become something lesser.

Elisabeth is convinced there are terrorists everywhere and based on her logic, you can look forward to the US military invading a country near you soon – perhaps even the one you’re living in now. Rosie is absolutely right – Iraq never attacked the US, and while I’m glad Saddam is gone for good because he wasn’t a good guy and he was doing some seriously bad stuff there, lies were told to get that war to happen. But it’s so much worse if a president sleeps with an intern – that’s a reason to impeach for sure!

This poor naive republican girl would stick by her political party regardless of what they do, all they have to do is say the word “terrorist” and she stops listening and starts patting people on the back for fighting them wherever they may be. I think she’s going to be seriously surprised when the Americans kick the republicans to the kerb at the next election.

If you take sides, and then your side does something wrong, you can’t just keep blindly backing them. That’s the bottom line.

Speaking of all things political, “Mrs Rudd” (she does not use that name, she goes by Ms Rein) was urgently called back home from London to have a discussion with Kevin about her business. A decision has to be made and I know we can all guess what that decision is going to be. The entire episode has been offensive to women – all women, whether they work or stay at home, he’s managed to piss them all off with his ill thought out comments. And when she comes out and says she will sell her part in the business, there will be outrage – and rightly so.

television shows, US Politics

Dead Poets Society – a movie review

6 Comments Posted on May 24, 2007January 13, 2015 by Snoskred

Originally released in Australia in July 1989, this movie became much loved by English teachers, who would play it in order to inspire their students – and it worked. Many Aussies are not aware that it was directed by an Australian director – Peter Weir.

Dead Poets Society had many messages within it but probably the most well known one is Carpe Diem – Seize The Day.

To me the deeper message was about people trying to push you down a path you do not want to go down. All these kids sent to boarding school by their parents with their entire lives mapped out in front of them, everything riding on how well they do in school, high expectations being placed on people without ever asking the kid – what do you want from your life? What do you want to do, what career do you want?

This message came at the same time that important decisions about my own future were being made. In the school system I was in, you could either go the “mainstream” way which was a path designed towards you studying maths 1, maths 2, physics, chemistry and biology in Year 12, or you could go towards music, drama, photography, home economics, latin, languages, the types of creative things which I felt drawn towards. I had a maths teacher who really saw potential in me but my potential was not maths related. In fact I hated maths, and he recommended to me and my parents that I steer well clear of the subject. I’m very grateful to him for that.

Reasons why I love this movie.

1. Robert Sean Leonard as Neil. His performance in this role is incredible. I really don’t have the words to describe the brilliance of it.

2. Ethan Hawke – This was his third movie ever, and certainly the one which provided a launching pad to his later career.

3. The boys – some incredible performances from Josh Charles as Knox Overstreet, Gale Hansen as Charlie Dalton, Allelon Ruggeiro as Steven Meeks, James Waterston as Gerard Pitts, and Dylan Kussman as Richard Cameron.

Watching them act is a true pleasure.

4. Kurtwood Smith as Neil’s father. It’s easy to just see him as a bad guy but his role is very understandable. What parent doesn’t want the best for their kid? Many parents think they know what is best, what career they want for their kid, and a lot of them push much harder than Neil’s father did.

5. The school. The film was mostly filmed at St Andrews School in Delaware. The location was also used in the West Wing episode “Two Cathedrals” and being such a fan of DPS, I recognised it right away. It is an absolutely beautiful location and adds much beauty to the film. As you see.

6. Robin Williams as John Keating. Out of all the movies Robin has been in, I believe this is his best performance and certainly my favourite. He is inspirational as the teacher with a difference.

7. Cinematography by John Seale* – another Aussie, and looking at the list of movies he has been involved with it is no surprise to me that many of them are on my dvd shelves. I’m not an expert in cinema or anything but the way this movie was filmed, the way the camera lets the story be told, it is incredible to watch.

8. Shakespeare. The play in the movie is A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Puck’s ending speech has become very well known because it appeared in this movie. It’s always nice to have a bit of Shakespeare around and it somewhat inspires me to review Shakespeare in Love next, which I have been meaning to do for a long time.

9. The ending of the movie. If you have not seen it I am not going to spoil it for you. Those who have seen it know what I’m talking about.

10. The poetry. Truly, it stars in this movie. I don’t want to spoil any of that for you either, if you’ve not seen it.

Quite a lot of this movie is available on Youtube. I would suggest if you have not seen the movie go and buy it on DVD and watch it from start to finish because little clips of this movie really aren’t enough.

If you enjoyed this review, you might also enjoy these other reviews.

Pump Up The Volume
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
The Pirate Movie
Chocolat
Shakespeare In Love
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

* Re John Seale, Oddly enough, he was involved in the filming of a movie called The Survivor which was filmed not very far from where I lived in Adelaide, at Pasadena – and many Adelaideians would remember going to watch the filming. I was like 5 or 6 at the time but I still remember the images clearly. It involved the crash of a 747 which in itself was fascinating.

Movie Reviews

10,000 visitors

1 Comment Posted on May 23, 2007January 11, 2015 by Snoskred

Sometime over the next day or two this blog will hit 10,000 on the counter. And what a fun journey it has been so far. ;) If you’re the 10,000th visitor make sure to leave a comment!

It is really cold here at the moment, something like 6 degrees. My fingers are ice cold. I think it must be snowing in the snowy mountains and a quick look at the webcams show that they did get snow yesterday, and no wonder because it was something like -4 degrees.

I had this dream last year that I went to the snow with the other half and for some reason Guy Sebastian was there skiing. Odd. But me just typing what I typed above reminded me of that dream so strongly that I went on a little Guy Sebastian you tube trip down memory lane. ;) I tried to find something nice to put here so it wasn’t a wasted journey but nothing felt right, so no music for you. Sorry about that. :)

blog housekeeping, dreams, music

Classic ad..

3 Comments Posted on May 22, 2007January 11, 2015 by Snoskred

Thanks to a new blog on the Australian Blogs Community, the Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe – I have been looking for this ad for ages, it’s hilarious.. ;)

Now, inspired by this commercial finally turning up on you tube, I once again searched for one of my favourites and this time I found it.. ;) They’ve been there for ages but my searches never turned them up.

Both these ads are suited to my sense of humor. ;) They had some great print ads that went with them as well, which were funny. And I’ll leave you with an example of a not very funny ad which always manages to annoy my Mum.

funny, youtube videos

Trashy TV.

5 Comments Posted on May 20, 2007January 11, 2015 by Snoskred

So how far down the scale of trashy reality TV do you allow yourself to go? What show won’t you watch because you feel it is below your dignity?

I like a lot of reality TV. Cops is probably my favourite reality show, followed by Project Runway, a lot of the Lifestyle channel shows where people are building houses or buying houses – the UK version of Location Location Location is excellent, so is Grand Designs, Property Ladder, Escape to the Country.. I love looking inside other people’s houses. I think this was because I was a deprived child whose parents never took us to open houses.

There’s one reality show which I am a bit disturbed by. It’s quite an old show but I’m seeing it for the first time on fox8 and now googling for it I’ve managed to spoil myself. It’s called Playing it Straight and there’s this woman on a ranch with 14 guys, she has to pick who is gay and who is straight.

Saying it like that it sounds completely horrible and realistically the concept is terrible and quite offensive however it is very interesting for a lot of reasons – one being that it truly shows you never to judge a book by its cover, and another being there’s no real indicators of a person’s sexuality – it’s not about how they dress or how they do their hair or if they can shop. All the stereotypes are pretty much shown to be useless and stupid, which is a good thing this show manages to achieve, I think. So 9 of the guys in the show were gay, and only 5 were straight!

There’s a lot of wedding related television these days – Bridezillas, Whose Wedding Is It Anyway which is really interesting about wedding planners. I think spending huge amounts of money on one day is a really bad and stupid idea but it sure makes interesting television to watch it. ;)

My mum is addicted to Big Brother yet again. I don’t have that channel on my TV and am very thankful for that. What a complete waste of time that show is and it gets worse every year. Gretel is looking worse than ever, and who gives a shit about those people? They’re mostly stick thin wanna bees. I don’t find those people interesting at all.

Chani asked the other day in the comments – what about Australian TV? There’s not much of it, what little there is seems to be junk like big brother and a couple of long running soapies mixed in with Aussie versions of Dancing with the stars and Idol. I cannot name one decent show, maybe some of the Aussies watching this may be able to. I don’t have any of the free to air channels except the ABC because it is a part of the satellite pay tv package and the reception on the non satellite channels is terrible, so I don’t bother with them seeing as there isn’t much to watch.

So what would you never watch?

television shows

Offensive Caterwauling

1 Comment Posted on May 20, 2007January 11, 2015 by Snoskred

Most female singers are ok, you can tolerate them while you’re grocery shopping, many of them don’t even intrude on your consciousness. However there is one female singer who I find extremely irritating not to mention offensive.

We like to go shopping late, once all the people are out of the way. So on Friday night we left here at 8:21 (yes I noted the time cos we were running late) and went to Woolworths which closes at 9. We got a nice $4 roast chicken – bargain! – and had almost completed our shopping. I was standing in front of the desserts cabinet contemplating a special on apple crumble when the most horrific caterwauling broke into my train of thought.

It was Anastacia and the track was the most offensive of all Anastacia songs in my opinion – it was “Paid my dues”. The other songs, I can almost tolerate but this song is one of the worst examples of female singing. Ever. About 2:45 into the song, there is an offensive barrage of very annoying shouting which I guess she calls singing.

Not even Mariah Carey and her stupid high pitched screaming can come close to this song on the scale of annoying – and Mariah rates quite high on the scale of annoying.

As far as the woman herself is concerned, good on her for battling cancer, she’s probably a really lovely person, I’m not a fan of the glasses or the singing but to each their own and if people like it they can play it in their own cars and in their own houses, that’s fine, but for Christ’s sake do not play this music in the supermarket when people are trying to shop! Especially not that song.

music, shopping

Thank [insert your own Deity here]

5 Comments Posted on May 18, 2007January 11, 2015 by Snoskred

So Prince Harry is not going to Iraq. You may recall a post some time ago where you got to see a rather interesting photograph of the family jewels which belong to Harry. I think now is as good a time as any to have another look at that post. Prince Harry’s Family Jewels Click Here.

I do agree with the decision not to send him, it was never a good idea and if something had happened there would have been a major outcry. It would be the equivalent of sending Britney Spears off to Iraq, all the nasty people there would be on the look out for bad wigs and soldiers wearing odd accessories.

I mean seriously, this girl don’t know how to dress, have you seen what she’s been wearing lately? If not, this was what I consider the worst of some really bad outfits.

And this was *after* rehab. I don’t know if she’s staying clean because I am firmly of the opinion that only serious hardcore drugs could entice one to wear this.

celebrities, Fashion