briarwood | (no subject)

Thanks for all the good wishes about Poppy; she's doing much better though the vet's ball embargo is frustrating for all of us! She's just finding other ways to expend her energy, like jumping on the furniture and hunting down all the balls we've hidden. It's amazing the places she can wriggle into! I'm pretty sure the idea was to get her to rest...so not gonna happen :)

I finally saw The Road yesterday; a thoroughly depressing movie.

It's the story of a father and son surviving in a post-apocalyptic America. Some disaster has destroyed the world. It's not easy to figure out what this disaster was. That isn't important to the movie as the film is all about the aftermath, but it mattered to me, because I kept wondering why (for example) there seemed to be no animal life around, because you'd think that would solve some of the food issues. And there are trees, so there must be edible plant life...but that didn't seem to be the case. Which implies massive pollution, but it couldn't have been nuclear war because then the survivors would be dealing with radiation sickness.

But it's not all that important. You have father and son travelling on foot. They have no particular destination in mind; there's no legendary sanctuary to seek out. They're just travelling south because they hope it'll be warmer. What's left of society has degenerated into chaos: some have taken up cannibalism in the absence of other food sources; others travel in gangs and pick off the weaker folks they come across. No one is having a good time.

The ending is pretty much inevitable and unsurprising, as it's signalled right from the beginning. But then something else happens. I suspect that "something else" is intended to offer a ray of hope, but for me it just underscored the whole hopelessness of it all.

I find it hard to recomment films like this - it's powerful and the performances are really good, but it's a difficult film to watch. If you're miserable, this will just make you more so, and if you're happy, why would you want to watch something guaranteed to bum you out?

After that, I was glad to meet

thanatos_kalos for sushi. Yo Sushi always manages to cheer me up.

Yesterdays over-hyped launch of Apple's latest product feels like an awful anti-climax. The iPad is basically an iPhone that won't fit in your pocket - how useless is that? I'd been hoping for something that would resolve my e-reader dilemma, but now I'm back to square one on that.

Here's my issue: I desperately want to get an e-book reader. Preferably this year. The biggest seller in the UK is the Sony e-reader, but I will not buy Sony products on principle (a company that will deliberately put computer viruses on music CDs can never be trusted). What I most want is an e-book reader that will also play my audio-books, as I have a big library of those now. The Amazon Kindle does that (in fact, it does it in spades, because Amazon own Audible.com), but last year's #amazonfail has me hesitating to tie myself in to Amazon in that way. If it wasn't for that, I'd definitely go for the Kindle as the Audible tie-in is a huge plus for me.

The rest of the e-readers I can find available in the UK are either pink (yes, I have issues), don't have any audible facility or have (IMHO) miniscule memory capacity, and really, what's the good of an e-book reader that won't take a decent library?

I had really hoped the Apple product would work for me. But although I'm sure it'll find a market for something it seems totally unsuitable as an e-reader. That backlit display is a real no-no. I have a laptop for that!