Stuff accomplished over Thanksgiving

1. Ate food.

2. Got gwynraven addicted to We ♥ Katamari. We got her hooked on the music (with "Everlasting Love") before she even saw the game. :-)

3. Ate more food.

4. Had the in-laws in town.

5. Ate even more food.

6. Saw Rent. Partial review here.

7. Ate more food.

8. Watched my Jets lose. To the motherfucking Saints. Jesus fucking christ. Doug Jolley's wonderful play aside, is there a worse two-minute offense in the NFL?

9. Ate more food.

10. Re-read the first five books in Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber. A series this good deserves its own post, when time allows.

11. Ate dessert.

12. Got sick. :-(

13. Ate more food (hey, it'll take more than just being sick to keep me from food!).

Woohoo!

This weekend, lokilokust posted a list of Criterion DVDs that she owns.

For some strange reason, I decided to write up my own list.

This is the equivalent of walking up to John Holmes (when he was alive), dropping trou, and saying, "now, how's this for a penis?"

I decided not to bother once it became clear that I had fewer than thirty Criterion DVDs*.

That said, I did wander by the Criterion Web Page.

And on this page, I saw that they're releasing a Criterion edition of Metropolitan!

This is only one of my top ten films of all time, and probably #1 on my list of films whose non-existance on DVD is a fucking crime. No release date, but it'll be out sometime in 2006, with commentary by Whit Stillman and some of his cast members (including Chris Eigeman). This is most definitely a film I'll own on the day of release.

*At one time, compiling this list would have been simple, as I kept my DVDs sorted by category, like "Criterion," "John Carpenter," "Jackie Chan," etc. But my wife insists on this bizarre organizational system called "alphabetizing," I don't quite get it myself, but I humor her.

Was the author condescending, or are we just idiots?

So, I'm reading this novel. And at one point, the main character, an American with a solid education and a background in both medicine and tech reporting (think of a mind meld between kizlj and docorion), makes it abundantly clear that she's never heard of the English Civil War or Oliver Cromwell (she had to look him up in Encarta to verify that he even existed).

The author is British, so I'm trying to figure out if he honestly thinks that Americans are that fucking ignorant, or if (as all those articles about how Johnny Can't Find Texas on a Map argue), we live in a nation of morons, where even the college-educated know nothing (as Bill Maher notes, George Bush did go to Yale).

So, in light of that, for those of you who are American, do you have an idea of who Cromwell was and what the English Civil War entailed? If so, does it strike you as something that a college-educated person should be familiar with?

I'm curious if folks in other countries that were British colonies at the time also know about it. I'm not sure how many of you (if any) are in countries that aren't current or former British colonies, but I'm curious about that, as well.

And I'm taking it as a given that folks who are actually in Great Britain do know about Cromwell. :-)

ETA: Like I said, she'd never heard of him. Period. The name "Oliver Cromwell" rang a bell with her in roughly the same way that "Pbsurha't N'adsdsadlo" would. We're not just talking about being unable to write an essay here.

well, crap

So, item 12 in my post this morning? Getting worse. Still feeling like crap, still have a sore throat, and still want to roll up and die. I had no fever this morning (was actually over a degree below my normal temp, which probably means I'm turning into a zombie), and I don't think I have one now, but I definitely need me some rest. Heading home soon -- I know I still owe a ton of LJ comments (more than I probably realize, given LJ's inconsistent mailing) -- apologies if I don't get caught up.