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Rant

Blog About Me [7/52] Some Things That Annoy Me

Monday, July 29, 2013 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

Hard to choose. I am fairly quick to get annoyances, but I also loose them really fast. So most of those things aren’t really worth my effort and attention.

Some bigger annoyances for me are…

…improper use of language, grammatically speaking, both in writing as well as spoken.  In English these are more often than not written things like typing there when you mean their or they’re and your when it should be you’re. And! Of when it should be have or ‘ve (should of, would of and so on). Obviously in this case, dyslexics are forgiven, but the general population that has had at least some schooling should just know this.

In Dutch these are generally spoken things. Something I hear a lot lately is the mangling of irriteren en ergeren. Many people say irriteren aan. It’s not possible to irriteer aan. Ik erger mij aan dergelijke mensen. Deze wijze van taalverprutsing irriteert mij. Ik irriteer mij daar niet aan, want dat kan niet.

 

…people talking “small talk” to kids. Turning every other word into a diminutive as if they otherwise can’t understand you. Kids understand way more than they’re given credit for and deserve to have their voices be heard.

 

…people that take their first impression of something and use that to form an opinion and a judgement. Without looking beyond the initial image, without doing some research, without thinking things through. Everything has multiple sides to the story, and nothing is ever as black and white as it seems. So do your research before you spout opinions and don’t be afraid to admit it if you haven’t. There are many things I don’t have a real opinion about (beyond first impressions) because I haven’t looked into it.

Posted in: Blog About Me, General Tagged: Blog Prompts, Me, Rant

Dates, Tricky Things

Saturday, June 22, 2013 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

Yesterday, when I came home from my singing lesson, I found a much wanted envelope on my doormat. It was from the hospital!

I eagerly ripped it open, expecting it to contain the date for my Gender Team appointment. And it did.

Except, something wasn’t right. Yesterday was Friday, June 21, and in the letter I was invited to come for my appointment on Thursday, June 20…

Obviously someone over there fucked up, either in making a typo in the date, or in when they sent it. I’ll give them a call today to see what’s up, hoping someone’s there today.

Stay tuned for more adventures in the land of Organisations That Don’t Have Their Things Sorted.

Posted in: General Tagged: Gender, Me, Rant, Transgender, Transitioning

Want, Want, Want

Tuesday, September 14, 2010 by Tse Moana 2 Comments

Gaaaah!

I want!

I want sunshine. I want a holiday. I want money. I want chocolate milk. I want to sleep in. I want a hug. I want more books. And time to read them in. I want strawberries. I want more knitted socks. I want a pool. I want to splash. I want to run. I want a hammock. I want a bigger house. I want roses. I want to kick things. I want to pet things. I want to sing. I want to dance. I want to hide. I want to gaze at the clouds. I want something fuzzy. I want to stand on a mountain and scream.

Posted in: General Tagged: Random, Rant

Torchwood: Children of Earth

Saturday, July 11, 2009 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

I’m still not quite coherent after this week of mind-wrecking tv but I need to vent things and since that’s what this place is for…
Just to be on the safe side I’ll put this after a cut for any stumbling in Americans that are waiting for BBC America’s broadcast starting July 20th. In short, I loved the series as a whole, well written, well acted, well directed, easily 4 out of 5 stars. I just have some minor issues and one major issue that ruined everything for me.

So… Torchwood… I’m in danger of rambling so I’m just gonna take this sort of by topic instead of doing it episode by episode.

Let’s start with the aliens. I thought the portrayal of the 456 was excellently done! By keeping them hidden the tension was kept up and there was no risk of having the audience burn the cgi. I was bothered by the fact that no-one tried to use the 456′ box against it. It sent instructions to build it so the government people knew how the thing worked, they couldn’t figure out a way, later, to break through the box and just kill the alien by venting its atmosphere?
The other thing about the 456 that I liked was that they didn’t want the children for some kind of higher purpose but just as a fix. To them, we mean nothing, we’re just a drug to them.

Then there’s the team. My love for Torchwood grew from the team dynamic. Granted, the wacky adventures they had we’re great fun to watch but it ‘s the characters and their dynamic that kept me watching. I love Captain Jack as this swaggering, cheeky man, almost always with a twinkle in his eye and at his best when he can go and do something. I also loved how they built up Ianto from the manservant who never got involved to full-fledged member of the team. And the Jack/Ianto relationship really gave a new dimension to both characters. Owen was another of my favourites, it was awesome to see him grow, see him become more than the basically angry man he was in the first few episodes of series 1. And, at the risk of repeating myself, same for Tosh and also Gwen. And then RTD started to break this down.
First he killed of Owen and Toshiko, leaving the team broken. I’d wished they would’ve touched on this a little more even though the scene were Gwen says good morning to their picture was really touching and all out lovely.

During the beginning of the crisis, the team sticks together and the team dynamic is good. As the situation worsens, however, the more the team gets separated (if not physically, then emotionally), especially after the hub explodes. I love about Torchwood how the team can make me laugh, and this series had remarkably few moments of that. I know it’s been emphasised from the get-go that this would be a darker Torchwood but there’s a thing as too dark. I watch Torchwood to have a good time, get some decent sci-fi in and have a laugh and a chuckle. I can’t remember any laugh out loud moments in this series, however, outside of the moment where Ianto breaks Jack out of prison. That was so very much a Torchwood thing; Gwen and Rhys sneaking in as undertakers, of all things,  then Ianto and his JCB come barging in. And Gwen admonishing him for taking his time when they run out and climb in to run :).

I also really enjoyed the moments the team members had with their families. Gwen with Rhys (even though he was almost a team member in this series), Ianto with his sister and her family and Jack with his daughter and grandson. They rounded out the characters, made them more human. Plus, they brought home the fact that this thing with the children does not only affect the world, it also affects them personally.

Now, outside of the the fact there was not much laughing or even chuckling to be done, I was gaining faith. The team was growing, getting used to being this smaller group. The dynamic was different but it came back. And then the unforgivable happened. They killed of Ianto. o.0
The scene was excellently acted and wonderfully executed by remaining close on them as Ianto was dying. But, and this a big one, it totally ruined everything for me. Jack is my favourite character of the bunch, but Ianto was such a close second you’d need a very tiny measuring tape to get the distance between them. And the Jack/Ianto relationship was awesome and brought new insights to both their characters and was slowly getting Jack out of his comfort zone. Jack is really a man who has been hurt a lot in his long time on earth and he keeps his emotions inside for the most part, a measure of self-protection, and Ianto was breaking this down. And then they killed him, and with him a part of Jack too.

The way of killing Ianto, however, seemed random(ish). No heroics, no going down fighting, just a virus, from an alien in a protective box, neither of which can be fighted, can be stopped. I get the point they’re trying to make: Torchwood is dangerous, you can die at any time, and it doesn’t have to be a major event either; but this was like a last straw kinda thing. After Owen and Tosh, now getting rid of Ianto killed the team dynamic. There is no team anymore, there’s Jack and there’s Gwen. Jack can’t really fall back on Gwen (although the scene with Ianto’s body was very touching) cause she has Rhys and her unborn baby. And with Rhys being the type of man he is, there is no room for Jack, not in the long run. And with no other people close to him, this leaves Jack on his own.

Then, the government. I have mixed feelings over this. On the one hand, I loved how they showed the process in which the government went along with the 456. How, once the decision had been made to hand over the kids, the people, almost casually, went on to decide which kids should be taken. Creepy Prime Minister was good too, really the embodiment of how many people see the government I think. It was John Frobisher, however, who was hands down the best part of the government parts. His development from a general paper-pusher to front man was very well done. You could see him wrestle with his emotions and it really showed how easy things change. He worked hard his entire life, was successful and then this comes along and in just a few days he is brought to the edge. The scene where the PM tells him he has been chosen as example and that his kids will be taken was chilling. The following sequence, where he requisitions the gun and goes home was marvelously done, with the sound going away and the music swelling. I half expected the scene to end with the closing door but then… the gunshots.

What I didn’t like about the government was that it took up so much screen time. I get that in this story line the government is important but, getting back to a previous point, I watch Torchwood for the team, I wanted more team time.

Another thing I really enjoyed were a lot of the secondary characters. These were excellently cast and brought diversity to the plot. Rupesh Patinjali for some reason really reminded me of Dr. Bashir from Star Trek : Deep Space 9, all wide eyed and ready to dive into the world of secret organisations and missions. Of course, we learn he already is involved and gets in over his head, just like Julian (almost) has on a few occassions.

I especially liked Clem and his tics 😀 His “isn’t it” over his shoulder, his smelling of things. A favourite part, one of the few moments that got a chuckle out of me, was when Gwen brought him to the makeshift hub. She’d introduced Rhys and then Clem goes “Who’s the queer?” Ianto’s fierce “Oy!” brought a smile and then Clem’s sullen response “He is, I can smell it” brought the chuckle.
I loved Ianto’s sister, Rhiannon, how her voice nearly broke when she asked Ianto if it was something she’d done that he wouldn’t talk to her. And then Ianto telling about him and Jack was marvelous, really brings home the point, we don’t fall in love with a gender, we fall in love with a person.

Jack’s family was a pleasant surprise too, Alice was very good, I loved the little tidbits we got to know about how she deals with having a father who can’t die and doesn’t really age. And how quickly she figured out that Jack was there initially for Steven, because he needed a kid.
Johnson was another I liked. Not at first, mind you, then she was just another person who happened to be the one wanting them dead. But later, once she started learning what it was the government was hiding, you saw her change, and that was very well done. Mellowing her without having her lose her hard edge, as demonstrated at the end with Steven’s sacrifice.

And that brings us to the ending. I didn’t really like the fifth episode. It seemed both too slow and too fast. It was awfully fast how the government managed to set the whole process of rounding up the kids in motion, a matter of hours, that seems a bit unrealistic (yeah, I know, it’s TV but still :D), yet the way it was filmed took too long, I got impatient with it. The way they showed the actual taking of the kids in the buses and such was a bit low on extras, I’d expect more angry parents at the fence and more fighting back. Not running after the bus for 3 steps and then stopping, no, get in a car, chase after it, stuff like that. Same goes for the scene on the estate where Rhi and Johnny live, the amount of soldiers and of civilians seemed to low. And the whole running off with the kids and hiding in the barn, that was… meh.
I both did and didn’t like how Rhiannon lashed at Gwen that she didn’t really know Ianto at all. Made it clear that there were still many things about Ianto we didn’t know and now never will, but also showed that Ianto apparently didn’t feel comfortable enough with the team yet to share that kind of information about himself.

The final solution that Jack and Mr. Dekker came up with seemed to easy, surely someone must’ve figured that out before… Mr. Dekker seemed to relish the thought the kid at the center would fry, the way he said it, it was very creepy. Jack’s in charge again, saving the world. And he has to make the decision to sacrifice Steven. there is no other choice, no other kid nearby. It was an excellent scene, very well done. Then when the transmission starts and Steven starts to bleed and you see Alice at the window and Jack standing there, tears streaming down his face. That’s when he breaks, and then when all is said and done and he’s in the hallway and Alice comes in and just looks at him and leaves him, that’s when he starts running away from things. He can’t take any more.

If it had ended there, it would’ve been better. The six months later epilogue was kinda lame. I get why they needed a set-up where Jack goes into space and such so he can meet up with the doctor (since six months later puts it conveniently in time for the Doctor Who Christmas special he is cast for) but… there’s just something off about it.

So… yeah. Taking us on a darker path this year, definitely. But there’s also something like too much darkness. Torchwood’s upbeatness was one of the main pulls for me, but this was just mostly bleak and harrowing and full of despair.

Posted in: General Tagged: Feels, Rant, Review, TV

Things I Really Don’t Like, pt. 1

Monday, April 16, 2007 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

In the series of Things I Really Don’t Like this time: motorcyclists who think they are frakkin’ alone on the road, hell, on the planet.

This afternoon I was out cycling with my dog and I’d decided to leave my town via what is basically the back entrance. The moment you get past the town sign, the road becomes a country road in the middle of nowhere, perfect place to let the dog walk.
I’d gone not even a kilometer yet when behind me I heard the familiar whine of a motorcycle engine. As it got closer, the sound got exponentially louder and louder and louder and eventually two motorcycles sped past me going well over the speed limit. I’m not that good at guessing speeds but it was way over 120kph on a road where you may go either 60 or 80.

Lucky for me I had Tessa on her leash. She’s never been too fond of motorcycles but these really scared her. If she’d been loose, she would have turned around and ran for home.
I cycled on, pretending nothing much had happened as to not reinforce Tessa’s scared behaviour, I heard a cyclist a little way behind me call out. As I looked back, he spoke again, so I stopped and talked to the man for a few minutes. Both of us had to blow off some steam about the motorcyclists.

As I write this, I can get angry all over again but *inhales deeply* let’s not do that. Enjoy the fact that today was a beautiful day with warm sunny weather outside while the house was nice enough not to turn into a frying pan.

*Ooooooooooohm…..*

Posted in: General Tagged: Dogs, Nature, Rant, Tessa

I Get That Fuzzy Feeling

Saturday, March 10, 2007 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

Why is it that stuff is never there when you want it? Correction, to be fair, why is it that stuff often is never there when you want it.

I went to a furniture store last week to get carpeting for my attic which I’ve been remodeling. Or rather, which my dad mostly has been remodeling with a little help from me. It has been turned from a, comparatively, huge space (going over my entire house (which isn’t all that big to begin with)) used to store junk into a nicely walled off 3x4m space which will become my bedroom and another space roughly the same size used for junk. All it needs before I can start moving my stuff up there is carpeting, which is what I went to get last week. I had hardly been in the store for ten minutes when I saw the stuff I wanted. It was fuzzy and soft and highish and available in red, it said so on the colour chart.

But, as I should’ve figured, what’s on the colour chart is not necessarily in the store. They had almost all of the ten colours right there, including a few awful ones, but not red. No, that needed to be ordered.

As the employee walked us (me and my dad the driver) to a little desk to fill in an order form he said that I could pick it up next week. But then, as he walked us over to a nearby computer to copy the order form into the pc (talk about bureaucracy) and actually place the order, he discovered it wouldn’t be next week. And not even the week after that, no it would be almost three weeks later. Grumble.

In all seriousness, I understand deliveries take time and all that but I just want to get my attic done, please, I’ve been living in a general mess for too long now.

*sigh* Rant over.

Posted in: General Tagged: Dad, Home, Rant, Shopping

Domino Bird

Saturday, November 19, 2005 by Tse Moana Leave a Comment

Nation mourns bird killed in domino shooting
Fri Nov 18, 2005 10:26 AM ET15

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Dutch animal lovers are mourning a sparrow shot dead after it fluttered into an exhibition hall and knocked over thousands of dominoes set up in preparation for a world record attempt.

The sparrow will be commemorated in a live Dutch television broadcast of the domino-toppling Friday after a wave of national outrage at the shooting.

“We know we are responsible for a lot of emotion in the country and we realize we couldn’t go on without properly marking this,” said Jeroen van Waardenberg, a spokesman for reality TV company Endemol, the firm behind “Big Brother.”

An exterminator shot the sparrow Monday in the northern city of Leeuwarden after fears the bird could upset more of the 4 million dominoes which staff had spent weeks balancing on their edges for the record attempt.

Dutch animal rights groups are outraged, especially as sparrows are a protected species in the Netherlands.

Hundreds of condolence messages have been posted on a website for the sparrow (www.dodemus.nl), which has attracted 200,000 hits.

Link to original story on Reuters.com

Yeah, this is what we Dutchies bother about, not the mess the world is becoming, noooo, we bother about one little bird being shot. In case you get worked up about it, they had tried for an hour or two I believe, to catch the thing which didn’t work.
Although, there was something funny on tv tonight. We have this comedyshow thing which is called “Mooi! Weer de Leeuw” (trans.:Good! de Leeuw again). And Paul de Leeuw, the presenter, had organised a cremation for the bird. An official car arrived with carriers and all that carried this tiny coffin, shaped like a domino stone, and it had wreaths on it (one, supposedly, from Sesame Street’s Big Bird) and such. Then he and some artists with birdnames in their name sang some songs adjusted to fit the bird and then it was carried away and ‘cremated’ in a microwave. It was hilarious.

Posted in: General Tagged: Media, Rant, TV

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