Pointless random question of the day:

Am I the only one in the world who doesn't think that Emma Thompson is all that and a bag of chips? I mean, don't get me wrong -- it's not that I'm a loathing anti-fan and I'm sure that she's a very nice person, but she just doesn't do it for me and I don't, quite honestly, get the gushiness that many people on the internet seem to have for her.

Of course, it doesn't help in my books that she won an oscar for that fairly terrible adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, or that she was nearly twenty years too old to play the role she did in the film. Just goes to show that Academy voters and real Jane Austen fans aren't the same thing at all, I suppose.

And yes, I do realise that most normal people would say that nothing is the same thing as a real Jane Austen fan, and that it's probably a good thing.

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Ok, in lieu of an actual topic since I had a pretty awful night, let's play naturalist and talk about the pointless photo for a change. The featured creature is a Police Car Moth. No, seriously. That's what it's called. Proof? All right, here. If it's on the internet, it must be true.

Um, seriously? That's from the Royal Alberta Museum's website, and it's generally pretty reliable. I have my sources, you know.

Police Car Moths are slightly unusual in that they're diurnal (active during the day). They get their weird name from their resemblance to the markings on an old-fashioned police car, right down to the orange lights on top. The moth in my photo doesn't show the orange spots very well, but they're there all the same.

It's a reasonably easy moth to take pictures of because it isn't that strong a flyer and tends to stay put for quite a while once it's found a plant to nectar on. It can often be found on Goldenrod, although this particular moth was bucking the trend and feeding on Yarrow instead.

Too bad, that. The contrast of the yellow Goldenrod flowers probably would have made for a better shot. Ah well. You take what you get, especially when you're not willing to put a whole lot of effort into it.



[/biologist nerd who hasn't had enough sleep]

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For those new to the program: the photos featured here are almost always COMPLETELY pointless and generally have little or nothing to do with the post's subject. Today? Is no exception.

Blue Flax is pretty, though.

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Ok, I'm the first to admit that I'm not really a movie buff. I'm not saying that I don't like movies; it's just that I don't really go out of my way to watch them. Something about investing the time, maybe, or in the case of movie theatres (which... I think it's been about ten years since I've been in one, actually) investing the money.

Having said that, it was kind of weird to find myself shopping for movies yesterday. In my defence it was more a case of looking for cheapness than anything else, but even at that to find myself in a rental store looking for liquidation bargains was to find myself completely out of my comfort zone. After wandering around the shelves in a daze for a while I did come to a very definite conclusion, though.

I should never go into rental stores.

I remember as a kid going to pick out things for movie nights and never having a clue as to what I should get. I'm sure I was frustrating as hell to the rest of my family, because it was almost impossible for me to make up my mind. So many choices. And what was I in the mood for? And what if I picked something that turned out to be complete crap and my family hated me for the waste of time and money?

Yep, choosing a movie rental was never easy for an olf like Yours Blatheringly.

Now, fast forward a few years (or a couple of decades... gah) and picture me trying to choose movies to buy rather than rent after being out of the rental loop for so long. It was fanTAStic. Or not. What I saw were shelves of really stupid-looking comedies (ah, those old rental memories came back pretty quickly when it came to the shelves of stupid-looking comedies), shelves of dramas that all seemed to have the same description written by the same person, shelves of horror and action movies that I didn't even bother to look at, and shelves of television shows that I never even watched for free when they were first-run. Too bad, that last, because I could have got some decent deals on boxed sets if there was anything there that I could have managed to care about.

But did I get anything at all in the end?

Well, yes. A few things. I ended up sticking with the new releases (which... sigh. They were more expensive. But at least the discs should be in decent shape) mostly because I could still remember the reviews and stood a chance of getting something I might like rather than just something that was cheap. Erm, yes. Reviews. One of the weirder things in my weird life is that even though I don't go to the movies and even though I rarely watch movies, I still keep up with movie reviews. Because... you never know, right? Someday I might want to see a movie or two. Or sift through the WalMart dvd bargain bin, at the very least.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

Anyway. I guess that's it for now. Smack the Cat is telling me he'd like to be outside (although I don't think that it's going to happen, since it's still so wet from yesterday) and I haven't even got to my Illustration Friday drawing yet, so I guess I should get myself moving. Or at least have breakfast, which is rapidly approaching lunch at this point.

Type at you later. Oh, and if anyone has any suggestions of movies to look for when I next visit a liquidating rental place ('cause you know it'll be happening regularly), feel free to leave a comment.