John Carter - A review

Keep watching this space. I am off to see this movie today.

Ok, so here's what I thought of John Carter, the movie.

When I originally saw the trailer during Star Wars Phantom Menace, I thought to myself Oh cool, another CGI flop fest where the book (which I have yet to read funnily enough) will be tossed in the garbage in favour of updating it for more modern times. Of course I also thought that having some eye candy to watch in the form of Taylor Kitsch (OMG THAT BODY! THOSE MUSCLES!) wouldn't be bad either. So off we went, my friend T and I, on Saturday afternoon to spend a few hours in Fantasy Land drooling over some hot bod.

The storyline was great, John Carter, a man from the US Civil War era, finds himself magically transported to Mars where a princess of Helium needs his help in evading marriage to the enemy of her people. Along the way John Carter realises he has superhuman agility (he jumps really high and far due to the difference in gravity between Jarsoom (Earth) and Barsoom (Mars) and has brilliant fighting skills),meets the Tharks, helps the princess and falls in love. While the CGI was brilliant, it didn't detract from the storyline at all and while the movie plot does deviate from the book (according to Wikipedia), it doesn't deviate too much. The acting was good, not great enough to be nominated for an Oscar mind you but still good enough to spend 2 hours sitting in a cinema not wishing you were somewhere else.

The one thing that I found most pleasant was that I didn't have to suffer through long periods of trying to figure out any slang, work my way through any swearing and use of bad English. It was just sublime to sit there and let the English language flow out from the screen, adding to the overall enjoyment of the movie. If old fashioned sci-fi with no swearing and bad language is your thing, go see the movie. Or else you could just drool at the screen. Taylor Kitsch isn't bad looking, at all.

(Not to be confused with the 2009 movie Princess of Mars starring Antonio Sabato Jnr (shudders in horror).)

When is a hymen a hymen?

Why is it that men are considered more equal in the sexual stakes than women? That it is perfectly alright if men have hundreds of lovers while women are considered out and out whores if they are not virgins the day they get married? What does an intact hymen actually mean?

All of those thoughts flashing through my head and then some. I have a daughter. She's 9. Right now I don't want to think of my baby having sex with another man or woman. As far as I am concerned she's going to stay my baby forever (wishful thinking I know but I just cannot face up to J or C ever having sex, the ick factor is just far too much!).

On a message board I frequent there is a discussion right now about an incident that all started with Rush Limbaugh's statement in which he basically said that a woman who uses birth control is a slut who wants to be paid to have sex. This incident was used as proof to call a 16 year old girl a whore after some of her classmates discovered she uses a low dose birth control pill to control excessive bleeding and PMS (whether the blog entry by the girl's mother is true or not is irrelevant as I have heard people say that any young girl who uses birth control is a slut).

As the mother of a young girl I am appalled that there are people out there who think it is ok to call a young woman a slut or a whore because she uses a birth control pill. Regardless of whether she is using it to prevent an unwanted pregnancy or on the advice of a doctor, it is just not something you call a young woman on the cusp of adulthood.

What message does that send out? To me it says that the world out there still thinks of women as possessions, property, chattel. Basically a slave to a man's whims. Really? Forget the burn the bra brigade and feminists. This is an insult to all women. We are not possessions or property. We do not owe our names, our reputations to a man. We are more than capable of standing up for ourselves, making decisions that affect our bodies without having the approval of some man out there. Men do not have vaginas, breasts or wombs. They do not understand the concept of menstruation, monthly cramps from hell. They do not understand what it means to have some little parasite living inside of you for 9 months kicking the shit out of all your major organs. They do not understand that when said parasite is finally out of your body that your breasts then become nothing more than a food supply mechanism, let alone the pain that is mastitis. They have no clue. Therefore they should STFU about our bodies, our choices, our reputations. Instead they should focus on being productive parts of society, using their little heads for good instead of bad.

For now, I will raise my daughter to respect herself enough so that when peer pressure starts, when boys decide she is ready to have sex, that she will be informed enough to make her own decisions. Decisions like using protection in the form of birth control pills and condoms, not relying on a boy to supply the protection (as we all know that a boy's brain sits in the little head and not the big head), and ultimately if she is ready or not. I don't expect my daughter to be a virgin when she marries (if she marries), in fact I won't insist on it. It is her body after all. I will however completely flatten the idiot who decides she's a slut just because she uses protection for whatever reason.

The rhino are dead.

Long live the rhino.

Since the beginning of the year, 80 rhino have been slaughtered for their horns. 80. That is more than 1 a day so far for the year.

Already the Javan rhino is extinct, declared so in October 2011.

As is the Western Black rhino, also declared so in October last year.

This morning's Beeld headlines screams out MASTERMIND ARRESTED! And what good would that do? In all likelihood the man will be out on bail and back to masterminding the destruction of our wildlife for a big payout. Sure he might end up with a slap on the hand prison sentence as it appears he has been involved in crime for quite some time but it doesn't do any good to the rhinos still out there.

It also doesn't help the rhinos when the very people put in charge by our very ineffectual government in order to protect and preserve the nation's wildlife is part of the problem.

And to add insult to injury, when a syndicate was arrested in 2010 (which included vets, professional game hunters and farmers) they were released on a rather large bail but have yet to be sentenced.

Not only are our park rangers part of the problem, it would seem that the police are too as is the magisterial system. There is legislation in place to protect our wildlife but until those regulations are either tightened up significantly and our justice system actually does their jobs, it would appear that our wildlife will still be raped and plundered by cartels in Asia.

Rhino horn has absolutely no medicinal purpose yet is a huge part of Chinese traditional medicine. Our biggest pride is being stripped bare so that a snakeoil salesman can peddle his wares for profit.

My solution - shoot to kill. Turn our military force onto poaching and shoot to kill. Let it be known that if you fuck with our wildlife, we'll fuck with your life. Permanently.

A new discovery

I am not Scottish, I do not have a drop of the Scot in me (well not that I know of anyway) so I find it rather amusing that my new music love happens to be tribal Scottish music.




That's Clanadonia, I bought their first cd recently from Freak Music. When their next album or cd comes out, I will be buying that one too.

The obsession with 3D movies

I took J and 2 of his friends to go watch the re-relese of The Phantom Menace 3D today. I love the Star Wars films, they are absolute classics as far as I am concerned even though they are so cheesy and the characters have the most awful dialogue. I was really looking forward to seeing it in 3D. There was so many scenes that would have been very effective as 3D scenes - the pod race, the explosions, the final battle, where QuiGon Jinn dies... yet I never felt as if I was watchign a 3D movie. Nothing jumped out like it normally does, nothing flew across the screen at me. I was sorely disappointed.

Before the movie started, there was a trailer for Titanic. In 3D. The one released in 1997.

I don't understand the obsession with re-releasing movies now in 3D. It's all about making more money off of a succesful movie I am sure but still, what a ripoff it can be if the movie doesn't have much 3D in it.

The boys enjoyed it, I got to renew my acquaintance with old favourites.

the price of a kitchen

R100 000, or $12 500. Coulda knocked me over with a feather when I got the email. Been a few days and I am still shocked at the price.

A recipe for divorce

When I was pregnant with C, we renovated our kitchen. That was 9 years and 4 months ago. I was 7 months pregnant, it was the middle of November, which is in the middle of our African summer (Cape Town's version, not Gauteng's!). I was huge (she weighed 4kg at birth) and it was hot. Hotter than the middle of the Sahara desert. Berg wind conditions.

You'd think that we would have learned our lesson, that renovating a kitchen can be a legitimate reason to divorce the love of your life.....not so much it would seem.

We're starting the process. Again. The last time it was a teeny tiny little kitchen where Himself and I couldn't get into it at the same time, let alone while I was pregnant.

So far, we've seen one company. They've been diligently working on our quote. We agreed to a final layout this morning. Let's see how much the damage is when we actually received the quote on Monday. I'm expecting to have to sell either J or C to pay for it.