Lemony Snicket!

A Series Of Unfortunate Events

Watched Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events! Me enjoyed it soo much. As enjoyable as the book itself, but of course, book adaptation is never a 100% kind of thingy.

Emily Browning playing 14-year old Violet is fabulous. Methink she got the most luscious, full, kissable lips! And how they quiver and pout at the right moments. And I am getting carried away with her lips. But I guess no decent movie review should actually focus on just the lips of the actress. Then there is the subtitled translations of Sunny's baby-speak (Sunny is the infant of the three Baudelaires, the other one is Klaus (Liam Aiken) the family bookworm). Those comments offer some of the biggest laughs.


The story is about the Baudelaires orphans' adventure (sort of) after their parents' untimely demise in a suspicious fire. The plot revolve around the simple premises of an evil relative (Count Olaf, played to the extreme by the ever elastic Jim Carrey's pursuit to get his hand on the Baudelaire's fortune from the orphan (by getting the right to be their guardian)

The setting gives you the Roald Dahl's feeling; dark and warped kind of children story where bad things happen and people really die and never return from the dead. With the occasional cliffhanger and mystery, it kept me gripped to the edge of my seat in suspense (while enjoying the immense beauty of Emily Browning's lips).

I always thought that the Lemony Snicket's books are much better (and popular) than Harry Potter. The movie covered the first three books, hence the episodic-like paces, and we can expect more sequels, as writer Daniel Handler has written altogether eleven series, with more to come.

Already bought the fourth book (The Miserable Mill) and am devouring it as I am typing this. Woohooo~

note to self : stop thinking about Emily Browning's lips. Now.

CASINO

Am suddenly inspired to think about politics. OK, not really politics, but more of the happenings in this great island of limited possibilities. One of which is the CASINO thingy.

Our great leaders in parliament now feel it is okay to consider turning this island into Las Vegas of the East since the "parameters" have changed of late.

And to think that the Gahmen is getting foreign consultants to actually look into this? Are they like, one day when things really screwed up, going to say that it is all because of the consultants? That it is not their fault? And that all these to-ing and fro-ing of debates both off and on-line qualifies as some sort of unofficial referendum from the population? That they have been consulted?

Me wondering how in God's name is building a Casino in Singapore will benefit us. "Us" especially the middle to lower income groups whom will not be able to afford even to pay the entrance fees to this gambling havens. Me questions too how this will actually complicate the already complex social issues and illness that is already festering in some part of our society. Pornography, unwanted pregnancy, juvenile delinquency, drugs....just to name a few of the worms creeping out of the proverbial cans. And now GAMBLING will come in a BIG way...(not that we don't have any institutionalised gambling here - TOTO, 4D & SCORE are already a way of life and most prolly will find their way into the time capsule that will define Singapore for our future generations).

Or did some members of parliament, while driving up to Genting or flying to Macau, and in a rare moment of commonsense realised that they could cut transport cost (money that can be gambled) if we have our very OWN Casino, here, in clean green island of Singapore?

Gambling is bad. Gambling is bad because I've seen with my very own eyes people I know getting hurt bad, real bad because of it. The worse part of which is how the dependants (spouse and kids) are also led into the attending spiral of destruction as Mom and/or Dad lose their head trying to settle mounting gambling debts, or just trying to evade loansharks (or banks).

The Great Procrastinator.

This blog is suffering from a serious case of not being updated, stagnant, old, obsolete and a waste of HTML because the author (or rather, owner) is himself suffering a serious bout of procrastination. That sounds like it is as if it is NOT his fault, but just some unfortunate turn of event which rendered him catatonic and unable to update, but the truth is of course clear...I am procrastinating. A lot.

Just take, for example, surfing the internet. I will bookmark many sites which I found to be of interest (so that I could return to them in better and comfortable times to read) but that will be just it. A bookmark. A digital dog-earing of pages in the 'Net that will most probably be gone (404 error) by the time I really get back to them. If I really got back to them. And so suffers this blog.

Is it true that all procrastinators have excellent self-deceptive skills? Or why are procrastinators always doing the lesser important things at the expense of the important and urgents? Do we (wow, its "we" now) just naturally inflate the mundane so that the more important tasks (and presumably more difficult) can be deferred and hopefully not even present itself again?

~sigh.

You may now return to whatever it is that you were avoiding.

Tough Ass

You need to have one tough ass to use this one...ouch!