An ode to Smartania

Stupid people have absolutely no use and might as well be mass exterminated, but the only thing that saves them from this certain and painful death by my hand is this: they make me laugh.

I will forever love the people who create and maintain the website Smartania. (For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Smartania is a comedy website that mocks bad fan fiction, sites that shouldn’t exist, and, well, idiots in general.) I have been swamped with a ridiculous amount of school work and extracurricular work due next week, and that website is the only thing saving me from bashing my skull against the wall. I personally enjoy reading the hacked fan fiction, which is basically bad fan fiction mutilated by the owners of Smartania. It’s like watching a really messed up comedy show unfold right before your eyes. But more than that, reading Smartania makes me feel slightly vindicated because idiots who think they can write–or live, for that matter–should not be allowed to walk around thinking that they are all right. Someone has to put them in their place. I’m mean but unfortunately not witty enough to do so.

Anyway, there. Smartania. Visit it if you have a three-digit IQ and hate all the stupid people that overpopulate this earth.

Joining the merry Harry Potter bandwagon

It’s kind of a week late, but I finished reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on Saturday/Sunday, pausing only to go to a movie with Pat. Since I’m too lazy to write a real review, I shall just put down my comments in bullet points. Luckily for those who haven’t read it yet, I’m in a generous mood and I won’t be writing any spoilers.

* Is it just me, or has Hermione and Ron never grown up since book one? You’d think that their personalities would start having some depth or that they’d be trying to “find themselves”, particularly at the age they’re in. Hell, I switched from party girl to punk poser to preppy nerd to just get me to a fucking college during my early and mid-teens. But Hermione is still her prissy, teacher’s-pet-irritating self, and Ron is as always, a very forgettable character.

* For a school headmaster, Dumbledore’s a little too emotionally involved with Harry. I find that a tad unrealistic and slightly scary.

* In spite of the flatness of the characters, which got on my nerves from time to time, I enjoyed reading The Half-Blood Prince. I figured that the Harry Potter series is more plot-driven than anything else because if Rowling included all the teenage self-discovery of the other characters, the story would become way too messed-up and convoluted. What I particularly loved about The Half-Blood Prince was the way the whole wizarding world was creatively described. It’s like watching a movie and while not all writers can pull it off without sounding stupid, Rowling was able do it quite well. The story itself was incredibly thrilling; I couldn’t put the freaking book down. Now I am eagerly awaiting the final installment of the series, like every Pothead in the world. I rate it 3.5/5

* Come to think of it, why isn’t anybody fat in the Harry Potter world? I mean, you’d think that they’d all be obese considering that they can use magic to do anything, from cleaning the house to going to places.

Teh Island

Today, I finally proved to Pat that not all the movies I pick suck. Okay, it’s true that I do have a bad history of choosing crappy movies at a whim, such as Dead People–some “horror” movie from New Zealand where nothing happened–and Kingdom of Heaven, which went absolutely nowhere. But today I was triumphant! One point for me.

For those of you who haven’t seen the trailer, The Island is about a society in a total institution set in the future. When I say “total institution” I mean (a term I stole from my Sociology book to make me sound smart and clever) that every sphere of social life is supervised and standardized. Er, in other words, think Lois Lowry’s The Giver. All the people in this society cling their hopes onto one dream, and that dream is to be chosen to go to the island, the only remaining paradise in a world that has been destroyed by a contamination. But then one guy (Ewan McGregor) discovers that there is no such thing as an island after all, and all hell breaks loose.

Okay, the truth is, I wanted to see the movie for Scarlett Johansonn, who I think is a total screen goddess. I know she doesn’t do any blockbuster films, which is why I was very curious about The Island. I didn’t really expect much from it, though. As I had just mentioned, the whole thing sounded like something out of The Giver, so I was prepared for it to deliver some sort of trite message about how the individual should question the society he lives in and the systems that control him, blah blah blah. But unlike The Giver, which ends with the protagonist escaping the community, there is an exciting and unexpected twist to The Island’s plot, which I shall not reveal because I am a nice person (unlike everyone who gave spoilers to that Harry Potter book). Then a lot of car-chasing, shooty-shooty action happens, which I intitially thought was useless but later on realized that it helped emphasize how badly these two people wanted to live. I thought the whole story was very clever, really. But I”ll let you decide for yourselves. 4/5.