Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Archives for January 2003

Sunday evening

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We’re watching Clifford, the Big Red Dog. Fia says over and over again, “I’m going to watch some more Clifford!” She says it in this weird voice that sounds like she’s channelling Kate Hepburn: “Ah’m gonna watch some mah Cliffahd!” Then she — Sophia, not Kate Hepburn — does the “Clifford” dance, which never fails to crack Darin and me up.

Of course, we might have been driven mad by watching the same damn episodes of Clifford over and over again. Fia is going to need her own TiVo pretty soon.

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We went to Claim Jumper today for lunch. Ugh. Not only do they have gigantic portions that make the Cheesecake Factory look like a spot for dieters — Claim Jumper includes an apple on every plate as garnish — but it’s gigantic, mediocre food.

The only thing worth eating at Claim Jumper is the Motherlode Chocolate Cake. Each slice of this cake breaks the never-eat-anything-bigger-than-your-head rule. But it is tasty.

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Around the horn, blog-wise:

  • Billmon’s look back at 2003 was one of the funniest things I’ve read in a while.
  • WampumBlog discusses the real, and more than likely extremely intentional, ramifications of the so-called “No Child Left Behind” Act.
  • Why have so many political bloggers adopted classical names — Demosthenes, Hesiod, Atrios? Is there a grand tradition of assuming a classical pseudonym in political writing? (Despite my education, my knowledge is woefully thin in some places.)
  • Digby is a great writer. I’m glad he (?) just started his blog.
  • As I will discuss in my entry about why I came back to my online journal, I am addicted to the blogosphere now. It reminds me of how I felt in the early days with journals, seeking them out, seeing what I could find. (Of course, there are approximately eight billion more blogs than there have been online journals. And just wait until the Chinese start to blog…) I must click the random-blog link about twenty times a day, seeing what I land on. I haven’t found any keepers through this method yet, but I am constantly reminded that there is a blog for everyone out there.
  • If only this site were for real.

Attack of the Clones: the review

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I didn’t see Attack of the Clones when it came out last May. I had felt so badly burned by The Phantom Menace that I decided I wasn’t going to see any more Star Wars movies unless Darin reported back that the movie was worth seeing. He saw Attack of the Clones and said that it was worth going to. I decided to go, but ended up having a baby instead. And after that, I just didn’t find the time.

I didn’t know when I would see it, but then my sister gave Darin the DVD for his birthday, and now we’ve finally settled in to watch it.

I am: underwhelmed.

It’s not as bad as The Phantom Menace. Thank goodness for small favors. There’s a clearer plotline in this one, though that’s not saying much. The acting is almost universally (ha, ha) atrocious and the dialogue is heinous. The visuals are nice, although on television many of the effects look exceedingly cheesy. But the biggest sin of all is the storytelling, which is unbelievably inept.
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