It was a long shot, and I knew it from the beginning. Who was it who said, "Despair is free, hope is a slave?" How well I know it. So the doors of higher education have shut in my face. It is duty and money-generation for me from here on out. Tough, but it must be done. As it is, I will moan and cry about lost opportunities (please let there be parallel worlds) then tomorrow I'll pull my socks up and move on to worrying about Plan B. Applying for grad school was pretty selfish of me, given the current situation, but I would have loved to have gone. Not just loved, I would have fair killed for it.

My Life Post-April 2010:

• Plan A: IMESS programme at UCL
• Plan B: Law school at UP
• Plan C: Work + law school at UBS
• Plan D: Work + diplomatic service by 2013
• Plan E: Work + MBA
• Plan F: Die young

Dear God.

So, the much-heralded Apple tablet (I can't bring myself to think of it as the official iPad) was presented today and the Internet has gone meh. From the many blog posts and tech articles I've read, I understand that Steve Jobs hasn't done enough with the device to merit the 'miraculous and magical' tagline. Still, the less-than-expected basic price of USD$499 makes me think—is Apple gunning down the Kindle or netbooks? That is only the first of many questions.

1. Will the presence of iBooks mean that Stanza, Classics, and other ebook applications will no longer be available? If so, fail and I won't touch the damned thing.
2. Can note-taking (ability to make highlights and comments) be done in iBooks? I expect that the Apple tablet will kill the Kindle DX, especially if it improves/clarifies the extent of interactive ability and in-program search capability (dictionary/Wikipedia) that would be such a boon to students. It seems that many people find LED back-light an eye-killer (I don't and I loved my iPod touch for reading) so I suppose the Kindle will survive for a while yet.
3. Will iBookstore be available without DRM and globally? I live in Asia where I can't even download movies and music, and I don't see the point in paying for a service I won't be able to use.
4. How well will I be able to play iPhone games with the large and rather unwieldy format?
5. How well does that onscreen keyboard work? Something I will find out only in July or August when it comes to the local Apple reseller.
   

Thing is, my white MacBook (used as a second computer, got an iMac and a PC at home) will be turning four years old in September 2010 and I have been thinking about its replacement. I was initially torn between a netbook and a Macbook Air because I expect to be in law or grad school (fingers crossed) and I don't want to be lugging about a laptop, even one as 'light' as a Macbook, along with half a ton of textbooks. The Apple tablet seems to strike a balance between the two IF I am comfortable with the onscreen keyboard and the unexpected iWork suite. It's very light, big enough for reading texts on the go and in the dark, and it's wifi + 3G enabled. My only issues would be the lack of USB or SD slot for quick file transfers, a rather measly 16GB memory (though I SHOULDN'T be loading the thing with movies if I was using it for crunch time schoolwork), and no multitasking. See, I don't use web cameras, edit videos, and live on Flash websites.

My hopes for the Apple tablet: force Amazon to drop their prices on ebooks (I'm not buying digital ebooks until they are at least 1/2 the price of deadtree), increase memory to 32 GB without a significant change in base price, MULTITASKING, and a USB port.

Verdict: Wait for the second iteration with its upgrades and lower price. If a hands-on test doesn't work out, stick to the MacBook or HP mini + iPhone/iPod touch.

Paul Bettany redeemed (just barely) the apocalyptic Legion. He was brilliant as the straight-faced Panzer-toting Archangel Michael, but I cannot understand why he chose to work with one of the flattest scripts ever. Given ingredients like bad-ass angels, the end of the world, an arsenal of big, big guns, and Paul Bettany, this movie should have been awesome, bloody freaking awesome.

But it wasn't, it was almost even horrible. So what went wrong? I'd say pacing was the major problem. The movie starts off with a bang, with Michael tearing out his own wings and nabbing a police car while Los Angeles descends into darkness around him. Then it jumps into the middle of the Mojave desert and I have to sit through fifteen minutes of exposition and bad Southern accents before Michael shows up and saves the day. Mr Legion Scriptwriter, unless you are Kripke of Supernatural fame or the love child of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, don't bother to pencil in philosophical discussions about why humanity deserves to be saved/not saved. No, sir, you scribble as many action scenes with Paul Bettany annihilating as many biblical monsters as possible (hell hounds! cherubim! devils!). I don't care about the mother of a supposed messiah or some diner dude who loves her (though the cook was pretty interesting guy, with his hook and zombie-killing frying pan). I care about seeing angels kill other angels and hordes of hell-raised demons. Why, Mr Legion Scriptwriter, could you not have done this?

Look at that poster, it's so kick-ass cool and its movie should have been tons better. I love Paul Bettany, and I wish I could see him sink his teeth into a genius script. Do Lucifer from the Vertigo graphic novels, or Mordion from Diana Wynne Jones' Hexwood (god, I would love to see him as the Reigner death's head, with Daniela Denby-Ashe playing Vierran). Paul Bettany, I have faith in you.

Smackdown! The Blue Castle vs Ladies of Missalonghi—same plot (shy, downtrodden thirty-ish spinster falls ill then in love with mysterious scruffy stranger in a town populated almost entirely by her relatives), different perspective. Winner: Lucy Maud Montgomery's tale has infinitely more charm and has the distinction of having been written at least fifty years before Colleen McCullough's novella.

Colleen, I don't like speechifying and your attempt to disguise a feminist tirade as feel-good period romance. I dunno if you took Blue Castle as inspiration or a target of criticism, but I'm surprised you haven't been accused of plagiarism. But, boy, that last twist which revealed Una's true nature... what were you on? and are you mocking your audience, believing that they would really swallow that divinely designed tripe? Deus ex machina should be a sin.

Valancy ten times more likeable than Missy (and they are basically the same character! Dunno how McCullough could have messed that up, or no, it was the scheming lies she made Missy say), just look at their names! Plus, you know Barney Snaith > John Smith.

For my SOCIO 10 class I am doing a Football & Sociology series. Managed a ramble of Coolwhip entitled A Dedicated Footballer of Fashion found here. First paragraph is provided below.

Football and fashion, two words that have nothing in common aside from the fact that they both begin with the letter F? F for False. I only need to mention another two words: David Beckham. Both men and women would sell their souls for thirty minutes with the former Manchester United midfielder. The former will wax lyrical about his skill with a dead ball and the latter will . . . well, what’s another word that begins with F? But football’s impact on fashion did not begin and certainly will not end with the last decade’s slew of sponsored sport superstars—Michael Owen (England) for Tissot, Thierry Henry (France) for Gilette, and Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) for waxed “metrosexual” eyebrows. No, the legacy of football had its roots in the stands and streets of 1970s Britain . . .

Ay, sabog.

I always get Dylan Thomas and Bob Dylan mixed up, but no longer. I picked up Adventures in the Skin Trade on a whim and it has given me a wondrous mixture of dream and nightmare for the last two weeks. Sometimes it seemed that Dylan Thomas must have been high or tight or both. I don't suppose that every poet must go the way of Coleridge, but much of the stories were pretty mad (The Lemon! The Tree! The Burning Baby!). Musical, myth-based, and mad. It must be Wales in the man.

The book is a collection of short stories and an unfinished novel, but the inner flame of poetry burns bright in Thomas as he comes up with stuff like:

At nearly two in the morning she hurried down Chapel Street against a backcloth of trilbies and burberries going the other way, umbrellas rising to the first drops of the rain a month ago, the sightless faces of people who would always be strangers hanging half-developed behind her, and the shadows of the shopping centre of the sprawling, submerged town.

—Adventures in the Skin Trade

There was creation screaming in the steam of the kettle, in the light making mouths in the china...

—The Mouse and the Woman

His name rolled about the mountain, echoed through caves and crevices, ducked into venomous pools, slap on black walls, translated into the voice of dying stone, growling through slime into silence.

—An Adventure from a Work in Progress

And—

The world was the saddest in the turning world , and the stars in the north, where shadows of a mock moon spun until wind put out the shadow, were the ravaged south faces. . . . Peace, like a simile, lay over the roofs of the town.

–The Orchards

And again, such imagery—

Round and round the wooden horses sped, drowning the cries of the wind with the beating of their wooden hooves.

—After the Fair

The toy of the town was at his feet. On went the marzipan cars, changing gear, applying brake, over the nursery carpets into a child's hands. But soon height had him and he swayed, feeling his legs grow weak beneath him and his skull swell like a bladder in wind. It was the image of an infant city that threw his pulses into confusion.

—The Orchard

Too many days, he said, sick of his mother's brew and of the poisoned hours that passed and repassed him, leaving on the gravel path a rag and a bone in a faded frock coat.
—The Horse's Ha

The man is a bloody genius. I wish I had a tenth of his skill with words, and with even a tenth that tenth I would be brilliant.

Dylan Thomas blurs the line between dreams and reality until it seems as if they are interchangeable or perhaps the same thing. I like that. I like Samuel Bennet skulking about 'the known, flickering corners' of his house and destroying knick-knackery of 'the strangers upstairs he had known since he could remember' before jumping on a train and conquering the loos of London. I like that jungle of furniture in Mr Allingham's flat and crazy Mary and just about everything, even the dark and the ? and the creepy. I like Dylan Thomas, he enjoyed WTFuckery.

Hope Bolton v Arsenal doesn't get cancelled. Wouldn't like to wake up in the middle of the night for no good reason.

On a side note, I wonder how it felt for thousands of Manchester City fans to wake up to find out that their club is £92.6 million in debt.

Borrowed from College of Arts and Letters library (the One with the Bitchy Ogres) yesterday:

• Death in Ecstasy by Ngaio Marsh—I finally complete my three-year survey of the Golden Age of Crime's Four Queens. CAL didn't have the entire Roderick Alleyne collection on shelf, contrary to the declarations of its electronic catalogue, so I had to start off the series at random. I'm in Chapter Three and boy is Marsh harsh on gay boys, referring to two rather effeminate acolytes of a New Age cult as "the black orchid" and "the red lily" (or have I got them confused?) and calling them both creepy.
• Adventures in the Skin Trade by Dylan Thomas—I remember him as the poet told us not to go gentle into that good night and as the lech who fondled a woman's breasts then promptly died. Read the introduction by a friend of his and was annoyed to find out that Thomas didn't even finish the story. So to continue with Samuel Bennet or not?
• Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers—Only because I couldn't find Five Red Herrings. I am going to have to do a crash course on Christie Time novels to make sure, but I think Margery Allingham's my favourite writer. I love Campion.