Susi Rajah

Win Neat Stuff!

Win the UK edition of Susi Rajah's novel, Heaven®, with a fantastic bonus prize: the award-winning Green Green Tea, courtesy of Today Was Fun, Ltd, in this great October giveaway from Penguin Books. There are 25 chances to win. All residents of the UK (over the age of 18) are welcome to enter.

Click the button on the left, or click here.

(US residents stay tuned for your chance to win one of 100 books & prizes very soon. And for everyone else who doesn't live in the UK or the US, we'll have prizes you can win too.)

3:10 to Yuma, La Vie En Rose

Whenever my husband gets the opportunity to choose the film we are going to see (that is, whenever I let him), we see a film like this one. One I'd never dream of paying to see if left to my own devices, and one in which men beat up on and kill other men over and over again.

But this particular movie was quite remarkable. It was very entertaining and that's remarkable considering that the entire plot is this: Christian Bale has to take Russell Crowe to the train station so that Russell Crowe can catch the train to Yuma. Even more remarkable is that this is a remake, so Hollywood has used this plot twice. Which means the "man taking other man to the train station to catch a train" plot has worked twice. In this case it works mostly because Christian Bale and Russell Crowe are both dressed as cowboys and get to ride horses and shoot a lot of people.

My viewing of this film was somewhat affected by the subway, which must have been directly underneath the theater. The first time a train went by, I fleetingly thought it was an over-baked sound-mixing attempt to add portent to the scene, but once my seat vibrated, I figured out where the noise was coming from. Several more trains added to the drama. And a mouse scurried down the aisle, making a beeline for my right foot, before veering off at the last possible second, adding to the film's suspense. But this was not the reason I didn't really follow Edith Piaf's life story in the film. That was due to the way the film continually jumped randomly back and forth to different parts of her life. Despite a great performance by the lead actress, scenes of early twentieth century street life in Paris that made you want to be poor in Paris in the early twentieth century, and Piaf's singing, I left not really understanding anything more about Edith Piaf than when I went in.

So much so that I suspected that maybe the subtitles had been translated badly, and were missing the key pieces of exposition that would have made it all make sense. The rest of audience were practically all French. I know this because all the conversations in the bathroom after the movie were in French. So I gleaned nothing from them either.

Get Your Doodle Stuffed

I read about this great site in Tomorrow's Soup, the always inspiring monthly email newsletter from Today Was Fun, Ltd.

This is how Stuff Your Doodle works. You draw a doodle. You send it in. Somewhere in Scotland, someone will bring your doodle to life and stuff it for you. And you end up with a one-of-a-kind stuffed figure with all the quirks of your doodle intact. Oh, and they make your doodle-critter out of recycled fabrics, so you're also being environmentally sound.

Pictured above are the before and after of a doodle by a 5 year-old named Gus. His doodle creature is called "Tinkle". Tinkle is a thing of beauty. I'm especially enamored with his monobrow.

Go Stuff Your Doodle

A Nostalgic Animated Moment (Or Two)

These were two of my favorite Warner Brothers cartoons when I was growing up. My brother found them again for me.

This musical version of the three little pigs story is a classic. And it twists the tale so that the big bad wolf is the protagonist. I thought this was very cool as a kid, and you know what, it's still cool.

Three Little Bops:

My brother says that Steven Spielberg calls this cartoon "the Citizen Kane of cartoons". I call it "the one with the singing frog in it". And there you have it, the reason Steven Spielberg is Steven Spielberg and I'm not.

(Unfortunately, the "One Froggy Evening" video is no longer available on YouTube. Sorry about that.)

God Gets Sued

In my novel, my heroine writes an email to American God telling Him to watch out because he has chosen for his flock the people most likely to sue him for everything that has ever gone wrong in their lives.

I always thought it was only a matter of time before someone did sue Him, especially as He is responsible for everything in creation, including natural disasters and terminal illnesses. If everything that happens is God's will then I'd say there's a case against him.

And now someone is suing God. He's being sued in Nebraska because, well, it's as good a place as any. God, after all, is everywhere. According to the lawsuit, God has made terrorist threats and caused “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.” (Is terrorization a word?) The senator behind the suit is seeking a permanent injunction against God.

Perhaps he will also be able to get back some of that money that God gets TV Evangelists to collect for Him.

If you don't believe me, here's the story:
Senator Sues God

Cake or Death?

I like Eddie Izzard. A lot. Because he is very funny, swears a lot and sometimes looks like this (see picture, left). If you have not yet met him, please allow me to introduce you. If you have met him, you already know he's well worth revisiting.

Cake or Death? (< 2 mins.)

English Empire Building (< 3 mins.)

Two Countries Separated by a Common Language (< 4 mins.)

The Gospel According to Eddie Izzard (< 6 mins.)

Visit Eddie Izzard

Instant Contraception

Let me start this post by saying that I like babies and I like kids. I am very fond of all of the offspring of my friends and family members (but then, their parents are sane). I'm even considering breeding myself.

But, in my generation, in a certain socio-economic group, in which most people have more money than sense, parenting has become an extreme sport and children have achieved the status of minor deities. Correcting bad behavior in a child is akin to blasphemy. These children can do no wrong. Toddlers are running households. They decide when the adults can sleep/eat/talk to their friends (and in some cases, the adults are never allowed to talk to their friends). And this would be fine if these kids were never allowed out in public where they can terrorize the rest of us, and where we are not allowed to tell them what to do, even when their parents won't. But they are. For example, an eight-year-old boy, in a store, was running around whipping open the curtains of dressing rooms (exposing women in various states of undress to the world) and his mother did nothing about it. We were, apparently, supposed to be charmed by the little pervert's behavior. And, when someone else tried to tell him to stop, his mother had a big problem with that person telling her child what to do. I feel sorry, in advance, for anyone this boy dates when he grows up. He is one of the many reasons I think this banned ad should have been allowed to run.

See Banned Commercial

Mind you, maybe these kids perform a societal and universal service. Maybe they are placed among us as a form of population control.

Matt for Matt

I just found out that there is someone in the world who hasn't seen "Where the Hell is Matt?" (that very charming video of that guy dancing around the world). So I'm posting a link here for him. His name is Matt, too.

Where The Hell is Matt?

Water for Elephants, Bel Canto, Brave New World, Stardust

Water For Elephants - Sara Gruen
I had to read this to find out why it was so popular. The reason is simple. It's an adult version of all those "running away to join the circus" stories we read as kids. It has a lot more realism than the G-Rated versions. People don't become trapeze artists with just a couple of weeks of training, dangerous animals are actually dangerous, clowns aren't comedians in make-up, and there is dirt everywhere. But otherwise, it delivers everything that the kid's stories did, a fascinating account of life under the big top, and the ultimate triumph of good over evil. That is, the elephant wins.
Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
This is a story of what happens when a group of terrorists captures a house, where international guests are gathered at a party to hear an opera star sing, and holds them hostage for a while. Relationships develop between the captors and captives, between the captives, and this is very disturbing as any relationship that begins with people waving guns around can only end in tears (and people getting shot). It was so strangely disturbing that after reading it, I had to read something incredibly fluffy, in this case an Instyle magazine (I actually read it, I didn't just look at the pictures) to feel normal again.
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

I somehow escaped reading Brave New World until now, which is more remarkable than it sounds as I've wanted to read it since I was a teenager and I've had access to libraries and bookshops my entire adult life. It is even more remarkable that the genetic hierarchy in the drug-sedated society in the book is so similar to the wealth hierarchy in our television-sedated society.

Stardust - Neil Gaiman
I read this because I wanted to see the film and if a film is based on a book, I like to also read the book, and in this case I particularly wanted to read the story that attracted such a great cast to the film. Stardust, like Water for Elephants, is a grown-up fairytale, only it's much more honest about it. It is written in fairytale language and there are actual fairies in it. Fairies and witches and ghosts and curses and charms, people wanting to cut other people's hearts out, a love story, all the good stuff. (N.B. The part that Robert De Niro has so much fun playing in the film is barely in the book, but the others are all there.)

Throw Like a Girl!

I first played this game a few years ago but it still stands up. Not only is it a fun way to avoid work for a few minutes, it's also very therapeutic. Especially if you've just been dealing with not-so-enlightened male colleagues.

Throw Rocks at Boys. Play Now.