Nostalgia . . . ruined!

Okay, this is going to be a random post. Feel free to ignore it.

This morning, I finally, FINALLY got tired of watching crappy cartoons on the Disney channel that are just disgustingly saccharine and destined to leave a child incapable of coping with the real world. I decided we were going to watch a REAL cartoon (i.e. something I watched as a child, which means it's better by default, heh). Anyway, I chose the new-ish DVD version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, better known to me as Warriors of the Wind.

Little did I know what I was getting myself into. Right away, I sensed something was amiss. The voice actors were different, which I already knew, but the dialogue was different and there was some extra footage. Apparently this "new" 2005 version is the original (although the Japanese would be the real original) and the old version from 1984 was a so-called hack job and people hated it once they saw this movie as it was actually intended.

But not me. I found the Nausicaä dialogue atrocious and clichéd. Although the new voice actors aren't bad actors, they were pretty terrible in this version. There's something about having widely famous actors voice certain movies that just doesn't work for me. (I don't like them either in, say, Princess Mononoke, but in that case I don't have an older version to compare to.) Princess Nausicaä seemed so pallid and weak in comparison to Xandra, her 1984 counterpart, who was a force of nature. She had so much more emotion and the voice actor added little growls and other sounds to make her seem more passionate. Another thing I like about the 1984 version is the names of things, like Gorgons instead of Ohmus, cloud climber instead of glider, and Seven Fire Demons instead of God Warriors (I mean, come on. God Warriors?).

Eep!

I guess the story is supposed to be better and make more sense or something, I don't know. I'm too upset to pay attention to that just now. I still prefer the 1984 version. I'm glad the music was the same, at least (like that haunting "la, la, lalalala" tune).

Anyway. Probably no one cares about this except me. But we'll probably be watching my old recorded VHS version in this house.

Triviality

When you're stuck at a difficult part in your writing and you're just so discouraged. When you can see where you need to go but you can't figure out how to get there. When you wonder why anyone would want to read this silly thing when there are many more important items on the roster: meaningful works to be read, beautiful works, time to be spent with family, walls that need painting, a sky that needs viewing, wind that needs feeling—anything but what you're doing.

When you keep writing anyway, perhaps badly, probably slowly, because even if no one else loves it, you do. When you remember you care too much to leave it alone. And then it becomes that much closer to whole and the experience from beginning to end is so worth it.

Blake & Me

My friend Stacey at The Endpapers is having a challenge to memorize a poem. At first I thought, I have 3 month old twins and a 2 1/2 year old. No way am I memorizing anything except the last time the kids ate. Then I thought, Well, I do have that book of Keats poems. Or maybe it's Yeats. Anyway, I'll just do a short one. And then, I already know the first stanza to "The Tyger." I'll just do that one.

So there you go. That's six stanzas to memorize! I've got the first two down, working on the third.

and what shoulder and what art
could twist the sinews of thy heart?

One a day. That's my goal.