Pirates (3)

Pirates of the Caribbean 3 trailer is up... in English, this time!

I'll Take The Capitalist Pig Method, Thanks + Those Guys: the underappreciated backbone of film?

I need this textbook in four weeks. All the copies are checked out and it's maybe 50/50 that one will come to me, but not certain (there's more than two people per book and the library allows you to renew when there's a waiting list).

[Poll #950321]

Note that it has to be shipped from England because this university makes an extremely strong habit of not ordering their required textbooks into the college bookstores, even though they also never even consider trying to have enough copies of the course literature for the whole class. I assume Finnish students feel so entitled to have their books for free that it's assumed they would generally rather not have them at all until after the course is actually over, or else sit on a rickety wooden chair in the über-quiet Reading Room to read the entire fucking thing, than actually pay for it. Assuming the universe would take any input from me on the subject I would vote for the Official &/or Unofficial Used Campus Bookstore method which, in America, seems to work pretty well (although it's much more expensive than this one, it also has the novel result of, you know, me with the book in my possession within the first week of the term). But then, in America you can get fast and free shipping from Amazon, too, instead of the shipping costing as much as the book (well, if it's a normal book. Obviously if it's a coursebook that costs four times what a regular book costs, the book is still more).

Somehow it seems easier to make polls than actually post with any content. And people like polls better than content anyway, right? Resisting urge to make poll Tomorrow I have to leave in the middle of the first lecture of another class for a doctor's appointment. Sadly, not a shrink appointment, because I probably need that more, or at least as much. I haven't made that one yet. I have terminally cold feet when it comes to the side-effects of psychosomatic drugs and ME, even though I'm a definite advocate for their use when people are as irredeemably neurotic as I am.

I watched All About Eve last night and was really impressed by George Sanders's Academy Award-winning performance as that narrator dude Addison DeWitt (not as much as by leading lady Bette Davis's as  Margo Channing, but she could hardly be more famous...). He was bitter and ironic and urbane and very cool. And very tall. And I'm surprised he isn't more famous, but even though he has a really long CV, he's not nearly as well known for any other pictures. There isn't even a picture of him at his IMDB entry. I'm sure he counts as One of Those Guys for a previous generation, or a person better versed in old movies. I'm certain I'd never seen him in anything before, although he was very striking and I also immediately felt that I should have seen him. There are so many of Those Guys out there that, after a while, you start to develop a certain connoisseur's taste for them, and also an eye for spotting them at 50 paces even if you don't know them personally (although wax tries to actually remember their names which kind of ruins the "It's One of Those Guys!" dialogue). I believe the technical term for Those Guys may be character actors, but it sort of emphasises another aspect of them. :/ In many cases I love them better than stars, though.