Category Archives: Pleasant surprises

Stranger than Fiction

By terje | Published: March 30, 2009
Watched Stranger than Fiction again tonight, and I was happy to discover that it was as good on the second viewing and in company as it was on the first and alone. The plot is a bit hard to describe without ruining it all, as discovering what the hell is going on is one of the [...]
Also posted in A Moistening of the Eyes, A Praise Chorus, Art, Awe, Bliss, Glee, Goosebumps!, Love, Movies, Pimping, Recommendations, Review, Speculative fiction, Television stuff, Yay! | 9 Comments

Fight Club

By terje | Published: December 30, 2008
I watched Fight Club again, a couple of weeks ago. It’s been a few years since the last time I watched it, but I still clearly remembered the plot. What struck me this time was how well the movie has kept; for a movie with such a major plot twist, it is remarkable how great [...]
Also posted in A Moistening of the Eyes, A Praise Chorus, Art, Awe, Bliss, Goosebumps!, Irony, Love, Movies, Music, Pimping, Recommendations, Revelations, Review, Whoa | 5 Comments

An awesome coincident

By terje | Published: November 23, 2008
So I’m sitting in my room, working on my linguistics home exam, and I’m trying to explain why the verb paint in the sentence his father was painting a picture is not the same verb as the paint in the sentence his father never painted again, right? My line of resoning is the kind I [...]
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The Matrix

By terje | Published: November 20, 2008
Just watched The Matrix, but seeing as I’ve already reviewed this movie somewhere else on this blog, I’m going to limit myself to pointing out how much the whole Matrix/human batteries thing seems like something out of Marx. You’ve got your people, right, who can be likened to either the people in Marxist theory in general, [...]
Also posted in Ambiguity, Art, Awe, Bliss, Coincidents, Goosebumps!, Hodge-podge rambling, Karl Marx, Movies, Old Heroes, Politics, Revelations, Review, Speculative fiction, Weird stuff, What I Learned Today, Whoa, Yay!, lol | 6 Comments

The Histories by Herodotus

By terje | Published: November 18, 2008
[Approximately 435 BCE] 2003. Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt (1954). Introduction and notes by John Marincola (1996, 2003). 600 pages of main text. 166 pages of paratext.
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The Gilded Chain by Dave Duncan

By terje | Published: November 18, 2008
1998. 396 pages. Eos Fantasy Paperback. First published novel in the Tales of the King’s Blades series. In the kingdom of Chivial, it is the task of the Loyal and Ancient Order of the King’s Blades to supply the king and his chosen servants with bodyguards. Boys, unwanted troublemakers for the most part, are taken in around the age of [...]
Also posted in Collections, GRRM, Literature, Optimism, Recommendations, Review, Speculative fiction, Yay! | 11 Comments

Curse of the Golden Flower

By terje | Published: October 18, 2008
I had myself a small movie marathon last night, and as a couple of the movies I watched might be of interest to my readership (I do after all have a fairly good estimation of both you gentlemen’s tastes), I though I’d review them. First one out is Yimou Zhang’s Curse of the Golden Flower.
Also posted in Awe, Goosebumps!, Great Expectations, Links, Loki, Lotta, Megalomania, Movies, Potential, Recommendations, Review, Whoa | 3 Comments

The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth

By terje | Published: October 13, 2008
1952. 186 pages. Gollancz SF Masterworks paperback (2003). In the 22nd century the people’s representatives in the American legislature have been replaced by those of the corporations, who in their turn are the clients of a few big, competing advertisement companies whose only concern is Sales. The citizens are no longer that; they are exclusively consumers, conditioned to [...]
Also posted in Ambiguity, Language, Literature, Review, Speculative fiction, meh. | 20 Comments

A TV Dante

By terje | Published: September 24, 2008
My sister is one of the most important students at NTNU’s Department of Nordistics (or whatever) and Literature, primarily through her role as founder of the departemental body responsible for arranging events related to the relevant field of study (primarily Nordic linguistics and literature, as well as literature in general). Yesterday, she had arrange a [...]
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WALL-E

By terje | Published: September 20, 2008
As I went to see WALL-E (from now on Wall-E, as Nature abhors a shout, even though it’s supposed to be an acronym) last a couple of days ago, I was feeling highly ambiguous and thus also a bit scared. You see, my hopes for this movie were nothing short of astronomic, as just about [...]
Also posted in A Moistening of the Eyes, A Praise Chorus, Ambiguity, Art, Awe, Bliss, Glee, Goosebumps!, Great Expectations, Hodge-podge rambling, Hope, Impressions, Irony, Love, Movies, My microcosmos, Optimism, Pimping, Potential, Rant, Recommendations, Relief, Review, Speculations, Wistfulness, Yay! | 11 Comments