RETAIL EXTRAVAGANZA

Holy crap Amazon is having a gigantic sale on DVD box sets, mostly TV-related. But most interestingly to me is that the sale includes a LOT of normally somewhat expensive British TV sets (Doctor Who, Blackadder, Elizabeth R, Cadfael, Coupling, Jeeves and Wooster, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, the original Forsyte Saga, etc.)

Anyway I added all the must-have things from it to my shopping cart, and now I'm faced with reducing my "must-haves" - which total $366.92 - so that they are more in line with my "can-spends" (especially since I do plan on buying some presents for other people too this holiday season, even if most of the ones I've bought have been for me).

Also why did I not know that this existed...does anyone know whether it was any good or not?

SNOW DAY PLZKTHX

Welp, gave my presentation and it was the best of the bunch (mostly because of the other two, which were history, one was all "here's some neat data! Argument? What's an argument?" and the other was basically advocating building a medieval village in a knockoff of Second Life as a pedagogical tool).

Afterwards, went to the Sanctuary (a local pub) with the only one of my profs who attended the presentation and the only other English grad medievalist to attend it, where we attempted (and somewhat failed) at coming up with an Old English poem parodying the opening of Beowulf for the Medieval Association of the Midwest program in 2010. (It's a lot harder translating from English to OE than vice versa, since there aren't too many English -> Old English dictionaries out there, not to mention thesauruses.) Then his wife joined us, who seems super-nice and is a medievalist in the Spanish department (and was the one who set said presentation up).

When we left, that predicted ice storm had started, which was TOTAL CRAP. But now I'm home, toasty warm, and hoping my final for tomorrow morning is cancelled due to weather, so that way I don't have to leave my apartment (since we're supposed to get a tenth to a third of an inch of ice followed by three to seven inches of snow by tomorrow morning).

Now I have to grade moar, and all I can say is, bleah.

He has the head of a camel, the neck of a crocodile...

Okay, so iTunes brought up one of my favorite songs in the world, "It's Not Easy" from Pete's Dragon. It was totally my favorite movie when I was a kid, even if the scary hillbilly Gogans frightened the crap out of me, and I always wanted an Elliott of my own. And as it happens, I still know every word of every song in the entire movie.

So I will leave you with some YouTube links of my favorite songs from the movie:
- "Boo Bop Bopbop Bop (I Love You, Too)"
- "It's Not Easy"
- "Candle on the Water"
- "There's Room for Everyone"
- "It's a Brazzle Dazzle Day"

And the German version of "It's Not Easy" just because, which is surprisingly well-dubbed (and the German voice of Nora might actually be a better singer than Helen Reddy).

(Also, if you want to watch the entire movie on YouTube, it's up there; this is the first part.)