You know, 'Jackie the Blade' is one of my favourite episodes of Samurai Jack and probably always will be, but there are SO MANY THINGS about it that don't make sense.

How does Jack get admitted to the Blue Monkey when it is clearly a speakeasy that requires a password? Why does he go there in the first place? Big fan of Lala Lilywhite? It looks like he enters along with the robot thugs who have come to shoot up the place - what the heck? Why is it the 1920s in that city and mediaeval times in other places and Jetsons Futurama in others? When and how did Jack learn to ride a bicycle? When and how was the Neptune Jewel removed from a chamber within a mountain to a Public Works building? If the water spirit could repel Aku on her own (which she did) why did she summon Earth, Wind and Fire to protect the jewel instead of doing it herself? Where does the water spirit go after that? Why did she make a jewel for controlling the world's water in the first place? If Earth, Wind and Fire (not to mention Water) can kick Aku's ass, why haven't they eliminated him by now? Some Tom Bombadil too-ancient-to-be-part-of-this-war thing? (Does that make Jack Frodo or Aragorn?) And when Jack whupped Earth, Wind and Fire, whom Aku can't defeat, in order to gain the jewel, why did the gangsters still think that Aku could kill Jack and they had to 'rescue' him? (Especially when Aku was all flopped out and groaning like that.) Since the gangsters retain possession of the Neptune Jewel at the end of the story, are they really so 'small-time' that they only use it to run a racket in their own city?

(plaintive cry) And why do they roll Jack's shirtsleeves up after knocking him unconscious!?

I think it's a sign of having seen an episode of Samurai Jack TOO MANY TIMES when your mind starts to work on it like this. Either that, or Harriet's contagious. Nadia knows what I mean *^.^*

A weird continuity thing: In this episode, Jack's hair is straight , collar-length and blunt-cut at the ends. Although it is straight (and looks terrible) in the episode with the Woollies, in most episodes it is wavy when it comes out of the topknot, and in every other episode I've seen the ends are of uneven length). I guess the gangsters took him to a barber as well as a tailor.

Well TODAY was good. I got up relatively early, as the parents were leaving for their sea trial of Lake Rendezvous, and had my shower while Kate did her Pilates, and then we hung around for a while waiting for Harriet and Nadia to come round at 11:00 AM. (Nadia, for Nekomusumians, is Aubie. It is so weird that now there is a Nekomusumian whose house I can actually go round to.) Kate slightly grudgingly taught me to set the video to record something from a Sky channel so I could tape Samurai Jack. (She disapproves of me watching so many cartoons. She also disapproves of the way I tend not to eat anything if I'm at home all day and don't especially feel hungry. I suspect she thinks of the two behaviour-patterns as somehow connected.)

Anyway, then Harriet and Nadia arrived and we said hello! hello! Nadia had brought the picnic hamper with nice plates and cups that she received for her 21st birthday and Harriet had brought her family's vast chillybin. We went to Foodtown in Howick and bought picnic food, as follows:
2L of Coca-Cola (chilled)
Some sort of rice-based chicken salad; some sort of pasta-based salad crap that I sure wasn't going to eat
Poppy-seed rolls from the bakery
Half a hot roast chicken
A bag of mixed fancy lettuce
Two tomatoes
A bag of those 'baby' carrots that are not really baby carrots but segments of adult carrots whittled down
A punnet of strawberries
A pottle of chocolate dip for same
A pot of pumpkin and kumara hummus dip
A bag of salt-flavoured potato chips
A three-pack of spearmint Extra gum (not really for the picnic, I was just restocking)

Then we drove to lovely Cornwall Park listening to Robbie Williams and discussing the extreme fineness of Orlando Bloom, brainstorming the plot of a musical romantic comedy in which Orlando, Robbie and Ewan McGregor play brothers who must find wives within a certain time period in order to inherit under the highly eccentric will that also caused Ewan to be brought up as a Highland laird, Robbie on a Midlands working-class estate, and Orlando in middle-class Oxbridge academia, and of course they all fall in love with the same girl (except where she turns out to be her own twin sister) and delightful misunderstandings ensue... and exchanging information on people we know who have gotten fat or become drug fiends or dyed their hair unconvincingly.

Although the forecast for today was not promising, we had a good, sunny, hot (although the mugginess foretold rain to come) morning and early afternoon. We positioned ourselves in that nice area down the stone steps with the gum-trees (choosing the spot so that the other group of picnickers in the area were screened from our view by foliage) and enjoyed a very good lunch, with much diverting conversation. Nadia kept knowing what I was going to say ahead of time because she reads this blog; I feel quite chuffed to have an Internet stalker. (To clarify: Nadia and I have known each other for many years, since she and my sister became friends at high school.) It was really just All. So. Nice. Nothing spoiled it. Nothing was annoying. When rain began to sprinkle we were just ready to go. So we did.

We adjourned to Harriet's house where we watched, I am shocked and saddened to say, a pirated DVD of Pirates of the Caribbean. (Speaking of which, how long before someone does an exercise video called Pilates of the Caribbean? Kate, who was reading over my shoulder, has just gone away muttering 'Such a dork.' Good; my concentration suffers greatly when I am observed.) This was particularly amusing because the DVD pirates had put in an English subtitle track from a completely different movie. Something about going to Las Vegas, with swearing. We turned that off quite quickly and simply enjoyed the Johnny and Orlando-ness. It has been observed today that I chiefly like men who are either feline or look a bit like monkeys. (And Alan Rickman, who doesn't have to conform.) Nadia gave me light shit about Allen Schezar and Samurai Jack, but fortunately I have absolutely no shame. We had to keep turning the sound on the movie very high because Harriet's parents were doing something noisy and home-improvementy outside. A good time, however, was had.

Then we came home, and the parents say their sea trial was a success. So I suppose we are having a new boat! And now, now I think I might bugger off and watch my tape of Samurai Jack.

Helloooooo. Today I cleaned Jannie's house in the morning and went to the optometrist in the afternoon to be fitted for my new contact lenses, which are to be my major Christmas present (recaprecaprecap). I had a very nice young optometrist called Kylie. I think I slightly impressed her with how well I coped with putting in contact lenses for the first time in six months; or maybe she just thought I had insensitive eyeballs *^.^* Anyway, she's going to get me some trial lenses and call me back in a day or two.

Wendy and Kate and Wendy's friend Di have all gone to see Love Actually which I am boycotting. It just looks like manipulative, formulaic, inauthentic rubbish. I don't care if people I like are in it (lovely Alan Rickman, lovely Colin Firth). It would vex me too much to see them in such an annoying idea for a film. I expect I've said as much already; lately I seem to repeat myself as much as Mojo Jojo or William McGonagall.

Tomorrow night my parents have to go to my father's work Christmas do and Kate will be babysitting late at the Mannings'. Not sure what I will do. Perhaps I should phone Natalie. Or perhaps I will just stay at home and watch Coronation Street and the Cartoon Network.

I really mean to write here more often than I do. It's a bore having to catch up. Anyway. LotR:RotK premiere in Wellington, eh? How hard did that rock? How nice was the weather? How cute was Orlando? (gives Sean Astin a chocolate fish for Best Speech)

We had an interesting day, Mon/premiere day. My sister had to go and have an ultrasound scan of her pelvis to see whether her ovaries were polycystic. (Spoiler: they weren't. Yay!) That was in the afternoon, anyway; in the morning she'd been to the gastroenterologist. My sister's innards are not her friends. Our mother took the morning off work to go with her to the gastro, and I took her to the radiology department. This was partly for moral support, and partly because she had to have a full bladder for the scan and it was generally felt that asking her to drive to Botany Downs with a full bladder would be inhumane. In between her getting back from the gastro and having to go to the radio we sat out on the deck (with her drinking the required litre of water) admiring how nice the weather was getting. I said 'THIS is the weather I want for Christmas Day.' I hope the gods remember that.

Seeing the ultrasound scan was interesting. There were shapes that looked like faces and at one point a tussocky hillside straight out of Rohan. My diagnosis: pelvic elves. I did recognise a kidney, though. After being told that the ovaries weren't the problem (and after a much-needed pee break) we went down the shops to buy slippery elm food, aloe vera juice and something mysterious in a box from the chemist to deal with her dicky guts. You know, my sister is a very svelte, bright and appealing young woman. She doesn't make strange smells or rumbling noises. Just so you know.

Then we set the video for TV3's coverage of the RotK festivities and drove into the city to meet Tony at the Westhaven marina, where is moored the yacht (Lake Rendezvous - stupid name, it's never been in a lake) that he and his chum Greg are making an offer on in partnership. It's actually a charter yacht which means maintenance would be out of our hair; the tradeoff is that we wouldn't have free use of it absolutely any time, depending on whether people booked it. I can't be bothered explaining exactly how it works but here is the charter company's homepage. Click on 'Ownership.' So anyway, it seemed a very trim and comfortable vessel (this was the first time Kate and I saw it) and much more spacious and civilised than the amenities on board Beatrice Boat. The toilet is actually in its own little cupboard, not under the forward cabin bed. There is a SHOWER. You don't have to be filthy. It almost seems too good for the likes of us. Also, on the end of the pontoon there was a cormorant, which I happily stalked.

My poor mother was tied up with meetings at school all evening. We then drove round, in incredibly slow peak-hour traffic, to Mission Bay where we stopped and had dinner at the tremendously nice and relatively venerable Italian café Tonino's - takeaways, actually, which we carried over the road to eat on the grass by the fountain, in the westering sunlight, admiring the intermittent hot-rods and classic cars which were proceeding past. Evidently some sort of club event was on. Tony was very, very happy, because he loves classic Detroit cars, and Kate and I were diverted by the interesting shapes and pretty colours. They had a marinara pizza and I had marinara spaghetti; great minds think alike. Then we trooped back to Tonino's and had gelati at one of their little café tables on the sidewalk while still more handsome vehicles lumbered past, some chatting to each other in Klaxonese. (When I was little I thought 'Clackson' was the name of a car horn manufacturer. My father said the name with the same reverence as 'Harley' or 'Mustang.') There were still a few stragglers coming along from time to time, with increasing numbers of ordinary commuter cars in between them, when we decided it was time to go home. It really was a most satisfactory evening, here in Auckland as well as there in Wellington. No hobbits, but it was a pretty good cormorant.

Today my only real housewife task was to do the supermarket shopping, and while wandering around behind the trolley in my usual daze (I think I was having impure thoughts about Samurai Jack) I saw a person I recognised, Natalie Prescott, who was my great friend in seventh form and who I hadn't seen in, God, what, six or seven years? She still looks exactly the same. Dawn French as a perky goth. I wondered what the hell I looked like to her, in glasses (which I didn't use to wear to school), a grey Disneyland baby-T and combat pants. She told me she had just got back from London yesterday, and we swapped phone numbers and nattered and laughed. I do hope I'll talk to her again soon. She was with her friend who I vaguely remembered, the only Indian goth I ever saw, and he recognised that my back-tattoo was Sailor V not Sailor Moon, as I am old-skool. So you go, Indian goth. The funny part is, Natalie and I both used to have part-time jobs in that same supermarket.

And Harriet and Nadia (who turned up on Nekomusume today calling herself Aubie) have invited Kate and me for a picnic on Saturday when the parents will be taking Lake Rendezvous on her sea trial (upon which purchase is conditional). One reason I didn't write much this past week was that I was pretty damn' depressed; I spent one evening wishing I could just be anaesthetised rather than remain conscious and experiencing the whole thing, feeling so miserable and hopeless and incapable of anything. One of the worst parts is the feeling that I really have no potential, that if I had any true talent things surely wouldn't be like this. Got my period the next morning, which just goes to show something or other. (That I should be anaesthetised when premenstrual, if you ask me.) But now, jeez things are looking up. I should make some Neenish tarts for the picnic, Nadia loves them and mine are held in particularly high esteem. (It's the Edmonds cookbook recipe.)

I have made and printed out my Christmas list proper and it is enshrined together with my sister's on the kitchen fridge door. (We also have a garage fridge, or as it is more properly known the beer fridge.) I already know what my major present is going to be: a new pair of contact lenses. (The hard gas permeable kind - they're expensive but they last ages, and are the best for my particular quirks of vision.) I'm going to have the eye test tomorrow at two, and while I'm in Howick must also remember to pick up the new collar tag I ordered for Robin the senior cat. Her current one has gotten so scratched-up that you can't read the phone number any more. The young man who runs the heel-and-sole-and-engraving shop knows who I am; we once played ping-pong for quite a long time at a university party and I made him laugh. I hear he's now married and has a child. My sister expressed surprise when I mentioned that; I said ah, but all young people are not like you and I. Even when they look a little like Dave whatsis from the Foo Fighters.

And that would be about it for now...

Oh, except that there is now a tiny 20-second teaser trailer for Miyazaki's movie of Howl's Moving Castle online at this page. 2.2MB and you need the Xvid codec. The only new thing we see - indeed, the only bit of animation - is a brief shot from ground level of the castle, on four immense metal hen's legs, apparently lumbering over the viewer. But it's atmospheric and impressive and I just can't wait to see the rest.

Foregone conclusion.

	I'm a Jack Fan! Jack is the man of my dreams! That noble, honest and kind heart gets me every time. And he's hunky too!
What kind of Samurai Jack fan are you?

Brownie points for finding a picture of Jack with his hair down *and* naked. Antibrownie points because of course it's from the Wonderland episode that gets on my nerves.

Well now; Tuesday already. I have been thoroughly enjoying a two-day rental of the extended DVD edition with special features for Africa of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. As with the first movie's extendo-version, my favourite thing besides getting to see extra movie was the cast commentary track. Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan own the cast commentary track. Whether they're whispering over the New Line logo about who should speak first (the little rush of affection and 'Yay, it's THOSE guys again!' that I felt was particularly enjoyable), exchanging 'I love you's or confessing that when they were seven they used to eat ants (all right, only Billy), they're weird and endearing and full of wonderful anecdotes. One gets an interesting impression of the actors' personalities from their commentaries; Orlando Bloom is semi-articulate at best, while Sean Astin rolls out the polysyllables and discusses the themes of the movie as if he's taking a masters' class on the subject. Christopher Lee simply gloats rapturously (I do feel sorry for him, being left out of RotK; it shouldn't happen to the number one Tolkien fanboy) and Craig Parker tells pointless star-struck stories about seeing Liv Tyler in real life.

Andy Serkis says 'Beer is good.'

All right, he says lots of other things, but I'm sure he'd like that to be remembered.

Today was more housework and also an emergency callout to go to Middlemore hospital with my sister and Bryony the nanny-child; this was to pick up Christopher the nanny-baby and his mother the nanny-employer, who had gone there in an ambulance a little while previously when Christopher swallowed a coin and choked and sputtered and puked alarmingly. The situation was aggravated by, at the same time, James the eldest nanny-child bopping his sister B on the nose, causing her to squirt blood everywhere and losing his TV privileges and any chance of McDonald's until after Christmas. When Kate got home this evening she berated herself a lot for her handling of the situation despite the fact that everything turned out fine. I am one of those people who, when I get something wrong but escape severe consequences, think 'I must be careful not to do that again' but don't get really upset about it. Kate is the type who manages to get just as upset as if what didn't happen actually had, with repetitions of 'And it would have been ALL MY FAULT.' She asked James to dial the emergency number for her since he was standing by the phone and she was trying to deal with a bloody four-year-old, and from this she extrapolates that she is a worthless human being. The problem is that she's always looking for evidence of this anyway. It's a self-esteem thing. Anyway, I rode along and sat in the car with B while Kate went to meet Christopher and Lindsey (Lindsay? Linsey? I don't know how she spells it, it's a vexatiously variable name) so it wouldn't be illegal to leave her parked there. And when she got home and wailed I did the pat and pep talk thing. It gets a bit tiring. I wish we could train her out of it; she'd be happier.

Ugh, I don't want to cook dinner tonight. Suppose I will anyway. There is practically no meat left in the house; I will have to go to the supermarket tomorrow as well as clean Jannie's house. Today I vacuumed everywhere and cleaned the kitchen and bathroom basins and benches; also the toilets. Tra-la-la, what fun.

One month to go until Christmas! Oh, and I have new sandals which I bought at the weekend; worthy successors to the Pastry Sandals which have become very tatty-looking. On this page they're the ones called Edge, and I have them in 'Raspberry' with a black rubber sole. They have a little separate compartment for your big toe; I guess that will be handy if I ever want to wear them with tabi. I am more likely to wear them with this, which is my Nice Dress for summer. I do like the yukata-inspired print.