comments follow on harry potter 4

First of all the theater was jammed, lines out the door for the 7:30 subtitled show and the 8 dubbed show. We got there around 7:10 and first went into the wrong line, so when we finally made it into the theater our seats kind of sucked (pretty close the screen, no raised at all, off to the side) but could have been worse. As far as the movie goes, I liked it for the visual imagination it showed. The effects, particularly in the battle scenes, were beautiful. I wasn't expecting much and that was enough to push me into the positive camp. But as far as a retelling of the book, it missed a lot of points. The whole thing about finding out where the Room of Requirement was, for example, with the cursed contract and Cho's friend betraying them and getting "SNITCH" written across her face, was a great episode in the book. The movie's kind of awkward Harry-kisses-Cho-then-thinks-she-betrayed-him-but-Snape-vindicates-her way of making up for it didn't work at all. Or the kids flying on the dead horse things: In the book, there's a whole scene where the kids who haven't seen death get coaxed up onto the horses and it's all very bizarre and cool. In the movie, the horse things are introduced in the beginning, briefly explained and then abruptly, flown on! later. Then again, that's what you get when you're trying to make a 2-hour movie out of a gigantic book. They need to bring back Cuarón, or some other director with the spine to take the book and make a really good movie out of it, rather than trying to cram a summary onto the screen. Another minor complaint: Helena Bonham Carter should never find work as an actress again, ever. She's so irritating and unbelievable I could barely watch her scenes, and she's way deep into typecast territory now as the "kind of scary/crazy but a little bit hot, maybe?" woman. All the other villains are tight, though, especially Ralf Faiehness.

In other news, briefly, I found out my final grades today. They are as follows: Sistemas Electorales (5,3); Conflicto Armado (5,9); Economía Política de Europa (6,5). In other words, B+, A, A. Judging by the grade for EPdE, I did really well on my final paper. Good news. Now I'm going to start making lunch.

i will never again bowl at mall plaza vespucio

WARNING: This post has a lot of cuss words. Apologies in advance.

After the closing academic stuff with COPA yesterday in (snow-covered!) Cajon de Maipo, which were actually not that bad, Vale and I decided to go bowling. The idea had come up after the form-filling ended, but no one was interested, so we went by ourselves. It was really fun, after an execrable start by me (0-1-1 for a three-frame total of 2). Vale rolled a 105(!) in the first game and I rolled an 88. Bowling is nice because, well, when I'm not with Lincoln and Jack, I don't care about losing. At all. We were both having a blast and in the second game I really got on a roll, no pun intended, with four strikes in a row! The best bowling game of my entire life! In the 9th frame I rolled a 9, giving me a 121 in the 7th frame. And then the motherfucking lane turned off. We'd paid for only a half hour, and once that half hour was up the piece of shit just shut down. No matter that we were THREE FRAMES TOTAL FROM FINISHING. And that I was on the cusp of bowling the best game of my life, feeling so happy. I didn't get it at first, but the girl at the counter said there was nothing she could do because they were closing soon. It was out of her power to turn the lane back on for three minutes. I was so mad I couldn't speak. Had I been in the States I would have argued, whined, pleaded, whatever, but in my furious state I couldn't even begin to get the words out in Spanish. The dumbest fucking shit ever is the phrase that kept repeating in my head. Vale was still in "we're just having fun" mode, not "oh my God this is something special to me because I have never even come close to doing this well" mode, so she didn't get why I was so furious. Still, she got that I was, so we left in relative silence.

She told me when we got back that she had been a little scared, not so much by me being angry (she's seen me mad before, mostly about the stupefying IFSA bureaucracy) but by how fast I went from incredibly happy to flat and speechless. It was a little weird, to be sure. But I recovered by the time we got back.

Today will be a day for working on my Armed Conflict final, which I want to turn in on Tuesday, and then at five heading over to give the Fulham Cohens some things to take back for me. Cori is going to spend the night here tonight while her family flies back to the States; she leaves tomorrow for Bolivia to spend some time with her (Maryland) roommate's family. Also the return ticket situation remains frustrating. I haven't heard back again from Bonnie of Advantage Travel, but the latest word was that I'm on my own to book a one-way. Fuck that noise.

yesterday i was really sick

The worst possible timing: I had a paper due yesterday and I have an exam tomorrow, but starting Monday evening, well, let's just say it was comin' out both ends. Plus I had a fever, plus the kind of energy-destroying pain in all my joints that fits in the category "flu-like symptoms," so much so that I didn't even have enough energy to watch TV. Oh and sharp pain right below my belly button. Aaaand I basically didn't sleep on Monday night cause I was getting up every half hour to go to the bathroom.

So I emailed my prof basically saying, "Sorry, I couldn't finish, please don't penalize me, I'll turn it in tomorrow," and my hunch is that he'll be okay with it. He's a super nice guy. Vale took really good care of me yesterday, brought me juice and ginger ale and made some chicken soup and white rice and even (holy crap!) home-made apple sauce that she just kind of whipped up in the kitchen. And today I'm feeling all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and I'm about to get cracking and finish up that final. Worse comes to worse I get a few points knocked off, which is okay because all I have to do is pass and I'm not in danger of failing. The paper isn't great by any means but it doesn't completely suck. In other news, I found another great video, again thanks to Crooks and Liars, this time of a guy named Andy McKee who apparently has spent a lot of time practicing on his guitar. Sweet.



Add that album ("Dreamcatcher") to my wish list.

Also, for anyone who pays attention to this kind of thing, I always knew Digby was a woman. Everyone always called her "he" (even me once or twice, I think), but that always felt wrong to me. Seriously. Speaking of which, congratulations, progressive blogosphere, winners of the Paul Wellstone Citizen Leadership Award. Suck it, Lindsey.

And now, breakfast.

starbucks failed me

After prolonged attempts to get online at two different Starbucks, I gave up and came back to Vale's apartment with her (she had been running some errands and getting her hair cut). She's been feeling lightheaded/dizzy/nauseous all day and I just took her pressure and it's scarily low (99/52, and with a pulse of 118!). So now she's calling Rodrigo and hopefully he will have some advice.

My electoral systems final is coming along despite the incredibly annoying Starbucks interlude; it's going to end up being pretty dry but not entirely devoid of purpose, which is about all I could have hoped for at this point. At the very least, I'm learning a lot about Portugal, Ireland and Greece that I never knew.

Also, the sunset was really beautiful today, a half-cloudy orange sky in the west throwing pink light off of the snowy mountains. I wanted to take a picture but of course my camera pooped out at exactly the wrong time. It's okay, there will be other opportunities for nice shots like that before I leave. Speaking of which, that date is rapidly approaching and I need to email the damn travel agent again because they never got back to me the first time about my return ticket. So I'm going to go do that and then keep pounding out histories of political parties. Because, you know, I just love political parties.

it's rainin' water

I'm back in the Isidora Goyenechea Starbucks for the first time in along time. There's no way I'd be back here on my own except that at 8 COPA is taking me, four other kids and a bunch of gringo study abroad advisors out to dinner at a really nice restaurant, Isla Negra, on El Bosque. Seeing as that's three blocks from here, and seeing as I needed a change of scenery in order to buckle down a little, I'm here now.

The buckling down is mostly in the form of working on my two final essays. I'm still kind of in the dark about what each will deal with specifically. That's okay for the European Political Economy one, because all that's due next week is a presentation outlining what I'm going to talk about. So I need some idea of a thesis and structure, but nothing really research-based or overly specific. Electoral Systems, however, is a bigger issue. It's due on Tuesday and I'm still not entirely sure what's going on with it. I've been snooping around on JSTOR (long live JSTOR!), but now I will expound for a couple of minutes in hopes of clearing this business up.

In new democracies, social cleavages tend to get defined early on and have deep historical roots. According to one school of thought, these early cleavages remain fundamentally unchanged throughout the evolution of the democracy. For example, in France the most fundamental cleavage is thought to be the rural-urban divide, and that divide still rules the day in French politics. It takes different forms and is seen across various levels of society: industrial labor verus agriculture, churchgoing country dwellers versus non-churchgoing urbanites, etc. This fundamental divide is the basis for the party breakdown in modern France, as such fundamental cleavages form the foundation for party breakdowns in most democracies. However, rapidly growing integration has led to huge immigrant and minority populations that are changing the scene: Witness the victory of Sarkozy, a Reagan-esque nationalist (thanks to Juan Cole for that particular comparison) whose campaign made use of white French people's reactionary fears of Muslim immigrant unrest. The same kinds of divides are coming to the fore in England, Spain, Germany, the United States (obviously) and even in the traditionally homogeneous Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Denmark. These are all highly developed, very stable Western democracies. But what of the less developed, newer European democracies who are participating in the same breakneck economic integration as those countries mentioned above, but without the accompanying influx of immigrants; i.e. what's up with countries whose populations are still remarkably homogeneous--religiously, ethnically, linguistically--like Ireland, Portugal, Poland and Greece? How do party politics break down in those countries, and how are they changing? Perhaps I should hypothesize that divides in those countries (I have to pick three, but that can be later) have to do traditionally with religious versus non-religious groups (i.e. commies), but increasingly have to do with protectionist/traditionalists versus integrationalist/progressives. That's a thought. Then again might be a bit ambitious for a ten-page paper with no time for original research. Still, good start. Good job, freewriting Luke.

BUT, the really big news of today is that it's raining and raining. This morning and early afternoon saw veritable torrents (relatively speaking, of course), and after a mid-afternoon break it's raining lightly but steadily now. Apparently this will continue for a couple of days, which means two very, very wonderful things: First, the mountains will look spectacular as soon as the clouds go away; and second, the air is clean as hell. It's so strange it is to grow accustomed to things a quarter of a mile away being hazy and indistinct in the middle of the day and then all of a sudden being able to see individual trees on a hill miles distant; like walking around all day wondering why things don't look quite right, then realizing that one of your glasses lenses has a substantial smudge on it, then cleaning it off and remembering what things are supposed to look like.

I posted a video the last time this happened, but today's rain-induced happiness can't quite measure up to the giddy ecstasy of that other day, because the wait hadn't been as long. So no video today. Still, frisbee is going to be 85 billion times better on Sunday because the air will be pristine. Oh baby! And now, it's time to get back to work. Profe Altman sent me an article by Alberto Alesina about fractionalization, complete with table of measurements of the ethnic, linguistic and religious fractionalization of almost 200 countries. Hott with two t's.

P.S. That link to Cole above is worth checking out; I know nothing about French politics so for all I know he's totally wrong, and his interests are certainly biased in favor of the Muslim world, but it's still a very interesting brief analysis.

P.P.S. The bathroom of this Starbucks smells fantastic.