Drinks are on the house!

What can I say, I do love a cocktail evey now and then....
[hat tip Ilyka Damen]

Bacardi 151 Congratulations! You're 139 proof, with specific scores in beer (120) , wine (116), and liquor (104).

All right. No more messing around. Your knowledge of alcohol is so high that you have drinking and getting plastered down to a science. Sure, you could get wasted drinking beer, but who needs all those trips to the bathroom? You head straight for the bar and pick up that which is most efficient.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 88% on proof You scored higher than 97% on beer index You scored higher than 95% on wine index You scored higher than 95% on liquor index

Link: The Alcohol Knowledge Test written by hoppersplit on Ok Cupid

I'm the mystery of the age, apparently.... at least for 1400

OKCupid! presents: The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test
The Harlequin is who I am.

You are a mystery, a jack-of-all-trades. You have the king's ear, but also listen to murmurings of the common folk. You believe in the value of force and also literature. Truly you are the puzzlement of the age.

You scored higher than 85% on Cardinal

You scored higher than 28% on Monk

You scored higher than 1% on Lady

You scored higher than 57% on Knight

I guess I'm just not much of a lady.

Chow Yun Fat Action Movie Star

I have recently been a mission to see as many Chow Yun Fat movies as I can. I loved him in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and I thought Bulletproof Monk was fun. But he really is in his own in John Woo (director of Face Off, Mission Impossible 2, and Broken Arrow.



The only 2 Hong Kong movies I have been able to find so far are Hard Boiled and The Killer. The first movie Chow Yun Fat made in Hollywood, The Replacement Killers, was produced by John Woo. All 3 of these movies are fantastic actions films. The Killer, while being a very action-oriented film, also manages to be the story of 3 men trying to act honorably. Hard Boiled is the story of 2 cops, trying to fight crime without falling to the level of the criminals. The Replacement Killers is about doing what is right, over what is easy. And they are all wonderful action films.

The one thing I hate about The Lord of the Rings

[Cross posted from my other Blog TFS Magnum.

Don't get me wrong, I love LotR! I have 2 copies of the books, (paperback editions that I read again and again, and the good hardback I've only read once - looked great on a bookshelf before I moved aboard my boat - now those books are in storage). I have the complete unabriged recoding by Recorded Books - this is great for cross-country car trips, as it is somthing like 20 hours of recordings. I haven't bought the DVD's yet, but I have seen them multiple times. It is a great story.

But the women in The Lord of the Rings, for the most part, are delicate flowers.

One exception of course is Galadriel. She is portrayed as a powerful sorceress, loved by some, feared by many. She's an elf, after all, and not actually human.

But the exception that really bothers me is Eowen, Shieldmadien of Rohan. She is portrayed as a tortured creature looking for the release of death in battle. Along the way, she does some amazing things, but as soon as her wounded heart is healed, she gives up the fight, decides to become a healer, and makes plans to become a wife and mother. In other words, she steps back into her rightful place.

Two of the main female characters can only be veiwed as strong if they are shown to be outside the range of normal for women. One is portrayed as non-human, the other as insane.

The set of changes made in the movie that I really liked were the changes to both the Lady Arwen, and Eowen. Arwen is the classic delicate flower in the book, she never gets to do anything except have dinner and get married. Yet Arwen gets to show some real heart in the movie riding against the Black Riders of Mordor. In the movie, Eowen is driven to accompany her brother and uncle into battle, but it isn't so much to seek death, as it is to fulfill her duty. Both get to be strong women without being thrown too far outside of normal.

A book that is very similar to Lord of the Rings is The Deed of Paksenarrion. Originally published as three books Sheepfarmer's Daughter, Divided Allegiance and Oath of Gold this epic follows Pakesenarion Dorthansdotter from her father's farm, to a respected warrior, to an agent of "The High Lord" righting wrongs, and ending with a great quest to save the world (or a small part of it anyway) from evil. Complete with elves, dwarves, magic swords and magic horses, I have come to like this tale at almost as much as LotR. It was written by Elizabeth Moon, a veteran of the USMC. The fact she was a Marine actually helped get it published - since the feeling that a woman could not possiblly write good battle scenes was common in the day. The Deed isn't perfect, what book of 1200 or so pages could be, but it is fun, it is sad, it is well written, and it is filled strong women characters.

[comments from TFS Magnum]