Wassail, traveler, and welcome to The Gable Grey -- a place of retreat, of renewal, and of resistance: a tree-shaded refuge in Dark Times. Now pass the threshold, and rest from journeys! For a cold wind is blowing; and here, if you wish, you may hear tidings of the world without...

Monday, July 20, 2009

Not sure if I am intellectually qualified to rate that movie...




The wife and I viewed The Watchmen last night. I honestly don't know what to think of it. As my friend and co-worker Jeremy wrote about it: "I watched Watchmen last night. I'm not sure I am intellectually qualified to watch that movie." I would have to share the sentiment, for the most part.

It's a gritty, very dark (metaphorically speaking) film. It was more satisfying that either Sin City or 300, two similar genre films. Otherwise, well... the superheroes were neither super, nor heroes; their faults undermined whatever gifts they had. Most of the Watchmen spent their time analyzing their lives, reminiscing about the past, fucking each other, and/or just generally being clueless about their place in society and the human condition in the real world. The only one of the Watchmen I gave a crap about, Rorshach, was labeled a sociopath, though he was the only one of the sorry lot who was actually proactive in trying to find out who was targeting him and his colleagues, and who seemed to have any clue about both justice and getting things done.

Anyway... I have decided to let my minions help me rate the film. Poll will be up shortly.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Fits and starts

Thanks to My Good Friend (MGF) Richard, who has been openly threatening to work on his Fantasy Fiction Project (FFP) again, I've been stimulated to return to the world of the Woodreeve, and have gotten some work done on it this week. Naturally that means that pretty much everything else, aside from work and domestic duties, falls by the wayside. But it feels good to create again, whatever the resulting literary merits (or lack thereof).
Whiles carried o'er the iron road,
We hurry by some fair abode;
The garden bright amidst the hay,
The yellow wain upon the way,
The dining men, the wind that sweeps
Light locks from off the sun-sweet heaps --
The gable grey, the hoary roof,
Here now -- and now so far aloof.
How sorely then we long to stay
And midst its sweetness wear the day,
And 'neath its changing shadows sit,
And feel ourselves a part of it.
Such rest, such stay, I strove to win
With these same leaves that lie herein.

-- William Morris, from
"The Roots of the Mountains"