What is this, Horseville? 'Cause I'm surrounded by naysayers. Wordplay!

*Blows dust off of long ignored livejournal*

Long time no see, lj-dom! Kind of took an unexpected hiatus there, so my apologies. Didn't mean to, but work just kind of exploded in my face and is only now becoming a bit more reasonable. I've checked in here and there but haven't been spending any extended periods of time on livejournal. What down-time I have has mainly been spent over on tumblr, where it's really easy to look at pretty pictures and funny gifs and not have to put any real thought into anything. I kept meaning to make an lj update, but I knew I wanted to talk about the dramas I've been watching and the idea of doing a round-up post just became more and more intimidated. BUT I'M GOING TO DO IT.

FIRST: J-DRAMAS

Why? Because I haven't been that enamoured of the crop recently. I don't know if I've just been picking the wrong ones (mainly I've been picking the wrong ones) or the quality has just been sub-par. Nothing's been that great, but I've powered through some.

( Shiawase ni Narou yo )

( Ouran High School Host Club )

SECOND: K-DRAMAS

( City Hunter )

( Protect the Boss )

( Spy Myung-wol )

( Scent of a Woman )

So, I guess there wasn't a whole lot that I actually watched. I think Protect the Boss and Myung-wol just made it FEEL like an eternity. Also, my sister is making me watch Boys Over Flowers again (she's never seen it and wanted to after we watched City Hunter) and it makes me want to die. I did watch a bunch of other stuff though, hence the next category

THIRD: NON-DRAMA-DRAMAS (or, everything else)

( Downton Abbey )

( Sherlock )

( North & South )

( Misfits )

( Young Justice )

( Doctor Who )

FOURTH: THE FUTURE

What is everyone watching right now? I'm currently watching Flower Boy Ramyun Shop. After initally wanting to give it a pass after the first episode I'm glad I stayed with it. I'm enjoying Eun-bi more as a character and Ba-wool is pretty adorable. I don't think humor is Jung Il-woo's strong point, but he's doing a decent job as Cha Chi-soo (though I keep wondering when he's going to come completely unhinged). The only real problem I have is Kang-hyuk who I initally found amusing with the whole "too lazy to open his backpack" thing. But he quickly veered from cute to obnoxious when he laid that guilt trip on Eun-bi. She's not your wife, dude. Step off.

The only thing I have waiting in the wings is What's Up which starts in December. I'm thinking about watching something older, maybe City Hall or Story of a Man. Any jdrama suggestions?

I hope all my fellow Christmas celebraters enjoyed their festivities. I know I did! And I hope everyone else enjoyed their weekends!

It's done snowing for the season now, right?

Finally I can post some pictures of my recent adventures in the world of knitting. They were Christmas gifts (minus the green hat), so I had to keep it on the DL. ( photographic evidence )

Next up is learning how to cable. I'm scared!

Finally managed to finish Hotaru no Hikari 2 and I pretty much don't have any feelings about it. For as much as I loved the first season, I have a distinct lack of any reaction for the second. It's not even that I disliked it or was bored. It was cute, there just didn't seem to be any point to it. We got eleven new episodes and what had changed? Hotaru didn't actually change at all until the last 15 minutes when she decided to start vacuuming. So, I ask you, what was the point?

ETA: LOVED the Doctor Who Christmas Special. I thought it was lovely and Matt Smith was excellent. I'm pretty psyched for the new season, which is great. Because, while I enjoyed the last one fine, I wasn't blown away by it by any means.

My uncle called me Friday night to ask if I'd watch my little cousins on Saturday so he and my aunt could go to the oldest's little league playoff game. At 8:30 am.

Ah ha ha XD. Yeah, I passed on that opportunity.

Instead, I slept. Then I woke up (around 8:30 actually) and cleaned (I'm not completely lazy, but 4 cousins under the age of 9 on Saturday morning was just too much).

I also decided I wanted to put a few more coats of stain on the coffee table I refinished about two years ago. I always meant to do it, but never got around to it. Of course, we had a giant thunderstorm on Sunday, so I had to bring it inside. My cats were immediately interested in it and got their dirty little paws all over it. Now it needs ANOTHER coat. But it does look nicer. The color is richer and I'm very happy.

The tomato plants I started from seeds and transplanted out into my yard a couple weeks ago are still alive! (A majority of them!) The brussel sprouts and lettuce bit the dust, but I kind of figured that. They were WEAK. I'm glad it's been raining pretty steadily since I planted the tomatoes. Not having a hose makes it really time consuming to water plants.

I'm pretty excited about my tv line-up tonight: Doctor Who and True Blood. I've managed to stay away from spoilers for the finale, but the mummerings seem to be pretty positive. Overall I've been pretty disappointed with this season. Granted, I like the Doctor and I like Amy, but the episodes have been less than spectacular. I expected more from Moffat, since he was responsible for my favorite DW episodes ever: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances.

Only two episodes of True Blood have aired, and it's driving me crazy because I wish I had a new episode every night. It's just been so completely on, I don't even know how to describe it. Bill has been fantastic (I agree with a lot of people that both him and Sookie are far more interesting when they are separated). Same with Jason and Jessica (and Pam! :D). However, I'm not completely sold on Eric/Sookie. Maybe I've just been underwhelmed by him? The fans of the books are so crazy for him, I think it may have put me off. He's interesting to a degree, but I still don't completely understand the hype.

Also, more nekkid werewolf please. DAMN.

This weekend I also finally got around to watching Alice in Wonderland. What a complete disappointment. I'm glad I never shelled out the money to see it in IMAX like I originally planned. Tim Burton has made some wonderful movies (Edward Scissorhands and Big Fish are some favorites), but this just seemed so entirely devoid of the imagination and darker whimsy that I had expected. I mean, it's Alice in Wonderland, how can you make it BORING?

It's hardly a matter of it being a reimagining of the source material. There are plenty of adaptations and remakes that are wonderful (Clueless, anyone? Even Burton's own Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was fun and interesting. To me, at least, I know a lot of people didn't care for it. Oh! I forgot about SyFy's recent "Alice" which was far from excellent but was at least engaging.).

But, Alice in Wonderland? I had to force myself to finish it. I just didn't care what happened to anyone. Alice hardly seemed a real person, she was just an entity that moved from one scene to another. I think Anne Hathaway's quirky White Queen was the only character I found remotely interesting.

I think the overwhelming presence of the CG world didn't help matters. Nothing seemed real, or tangible. It didn't even look like a dream. It just looked fake and I didn't care.

Also, did it seem like everyone was mumbling the entire time? I seriously couldn't understand half of what was being said and it drove me insane.

I haven't seen the Disney cartoon since I was very, very young, but I feel like I should watch it now. I also should find a copy of the 1985 TV version because I love it in all its campiness. I should also probably read the actual book one of these days (I don't think the play version I was in counts). :DV

The Naked Kitchen has been sitting on my harddrive for quite some time now, and for whatever reason I was on a Joo Ji Hoon kick yesterday. I would have watched some of my favorite scenes from Goong, but that would have taken effort, so I just watched this movie instead. I can't really recommend it, as I found it painfully boring, but JJH was a definite bright spot in the entire dull affair.

The story centers around Mo-rae a young woman just celebrating her one-year anniversary. She loves her husband, whom she had known her entire life, but there is one problem: her husband isn't played by Joo Ji Hoon. The stranger she runs in to when she sneaks into a ceramics exhibit is.

I am not sure what I was expecting with this movie as I had heard that it wasn't that great. I didn't expect it to be so painfully vanilla. When you are dealing with an infidelity plot you expect it to at least have a little drama. Every character seemed like a perfectly nice, but completely irrelevant piece of the scenery. JJH's character was the only one when any minimal spark of life, but even that was hardly allowed by the yawn-inducing script. In a movie that focuses solely on the relationships between three characters you want to actually CARE about those relationships. It was hard to tell if Mo-rae even really liked either of the two men in her life as she just seemed to float through the movie not really interacting with anything.

Exibitions of real emotion or passion were few and far between in this movie, but the initial hook-up between Mo-rae and Du-re in the art gallery was hot and very prettily shot. If only we got kisses like this in our kdramas (I didn't include any NSFW caps. There isn't any nudity in the movie, but there is a bra sighting and some skirt hiking). It's such a rare sight, I thought it was worthy of a picspam for drama_hunt:


( The sun was in my eyes... )

Doctor Who: The End of Time Part 1 - What did I just watch? Seriously, does RTD have some kind of magnet poetry set that he used to create this plot? Highlight for not so much spoilers as a list of some of the random ass stuff from the episode: Ood Kumbaya Circles, Emperor Palpatine Master, a father and daughter relationship with a rather creepy vibe, and random cactus people? I don't even know what to think. Though at the end of the episode all I could think of was "That's like dali_lamb's idea of a perfect world"

The New Doctor Who Companion was announced

She's absolutely gorgeous, and while I remember the episode she was in I don't remember her or her acting skills. Hopefully she'll be good? Honestly I was hoping for someone a little more exciting since they've already done the pretty girl thing. Mix it up guys. Hopefully she'll be a fun character. I guess we'll see.

And while I'm talking about goings on from that side of the pond... have some more Father Ted clips, because I can't help myself: I hear you're a racist now, Father

This weekend is devoted to painting my living room. It's going to be Perennial Gold, which is hopefully the perfect shade of gold because I don't want to paint it twice. I get so anxious about colors, because I LOVE when people are bold with them. But I get so gun shy when it comes to doing it myself. I'll post pictures once it is done!

Also, I discovered there is no outlet in my bathroom (I don't blow dry my hair so I never looked before). That's bizarre.