My new computer (and my coffee)....

Check out my new computer! Rick bought it for me for our 14th anniversary (which is today – Happy Hanukkah, Rick! :)). I definitely needed a new computer – my old computer was falling apart. And I mean that literally. The case was continually cracking – I even lost entire little bits of the corners – which prompted me to make use of the warranty and have it replaced a couple times. A technician would come out to the house and pry the offending plastic off the computer, and within minutes it would be replaced with brand spanking new plastic. I would then assume that my case-cracking problems were resolved, and I would return to using my computer as a doorstop, an emergency soccer ball for David Beckham, and of course as a hotplate for bowls of mashed potatoes and soup. I don’t know why the case kept cracking like that…

And recently I’ve been having problems beyond a cracked case and missing bits of plastic. The computer would refuse to start when I hit the power button, opting instead to freeze up at a black screen that simply proclaimed the supremacy of Windows… I wasn’t able to actually USE Windows. I was only able to stare at its stupid logo until I powered the computer off and turned it on again. At which point my computer would remind me that it had failed to start properly and did I want to start it in safe mode?? (No, I don’t want to start you in safe mode! Just run like a normal computer already!) It was also starting to deny me access to my email, refusing to send or receive anything for me. I could hit the “send/receive” button all I wanted, but it would never move past “50 percent completed.” Eventually it would give up and ask me arbitrary questions, like, “what’s your password?” and “do you come here often?” and “how high do you think the price of milk will climb?” and I would realize that it had no intention whatsoever of sending or receiving any email.

Anyway, Rick informed me that little annoyances like this can be indicative of impending hard drive failure, so we backed up my email and pictures and my gazillion Word documents, lest my computer decide to crash and burn. (And I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if it had really, literally caught fire…) But that was just a temporary measure until I could procure a spiffy NEW computer that actually starts up when I hit the power button and doesn’t protest when I want to read email. Yippee! :)

On to a completely different subject… I was hanging out at home late Saturday night, flipping through some of my movie channels, and I saw the movie “Pan’s Labyrinth” was about to start. Well, I’d heard SO many good reviews of that movie, from critics and regular movie-goers alike, that I decided to give it a shot. It was billed as a fantasy – a sort of dark journey through a fantastical world of imagination. I mean, that’s what it LOOKED like from all the previews. And at first, that’s the way it seemed to be moving – it began with the fairy tale story of an immortal princess who had lived in a kingdom underground, and she wanted to see the world above. So she snuck out of the kingdom, and became mortal, and eventually died. But her soul was still out there in the world somewhere – and some day she would return to the underground kingdom and once again be immortal…

I suppose my first hint that this movie would not be what I was expecting should’ve been the fact that the immortal princess lived in the UNDERWORLD. I mean, she was like the princess of Hades or something. But at first, I just ran with the melancholy mood of the film, and tried to appreciate the great cinematography and special effects. But as the movie went on, it was much less a “fantasy” movie than a graphic war movie with occasional fantasy elements thrown in… and with quite a bit of horror movie, to boot. And by the time it got to the part with the über-creepy “Pale Man” (a bizarre, extremely disturbing man-type creature with sagging skin, dagger-like fingernails and eyeballs in his hands), I found myself thinking, “what the heck am I WATCHING here???” There was too much shocking, graphic violence for the “fantasies” to seem real… the fantasies were too grotesque to be a believable figment of a little girl’s imagination… and the reality was so disturbing and depressing that I was left with a distinct feeling of hopelessness and futility by the end of the movie. I suppose it could be considered a “good” movie in some ways, and it does touch on themes like courage and loyalty and good overcoming evil, but it seemed a bit too disjointed for my tastes. I’ve been unable to decide if I actually “liked” it, or if I was totally disappointed by it. But judging from the confusion of reality and fantasy mixed within the movie, perhaps the director WANTED people to be totally confused by his vision…

Oh well… I have to go deal with the confusion of packing for our trip up to Chicago… will it be warm? Cold? Both? Who knows… :)