Well, the gala went off just as it should. Fine day, little scudding clouds, warm sun. I got up at 7:22 AM which is like a record for me lately, and went early with my mother, who had to make sure all was in readiness. We told my father this was because I had to help, meaning I couldn't help him with the boat. Muahaha. I actually did end up helping, securing a sign that had been put in the wrong place and wrapping up an extra boxful of donated bottles that had been brought in addition to the already-wrapped stock. I was the First Official Customer of the Mystery Bottles stall when it opened at 10 - although two mothers from the gala organisation committee rather spoiled it by sneaking in ahead of me unofficially. I got two cheap vanilla vodka RTDs (packed together because of the cheapness). Then it was off to make the most of the gala. I bought a dixie cup of fudge (the vanilla and Russian flavours were excellent if squishy, but the dark chocolate was too sweet and made me feel ill so I didn't finish it), browsed the secondhand books and went to the white elephant sale in the hall. It was very VERY crowded and hard to get through if you weren't pushy. The one thing I regret is that I didn't buy that 20-piece dinner service, which was nothing fancy but would have been an excellent, practical thing for my glory box. But I just wanted to escape! When I went back later of course it was gone. Then I wandered down to the field where there were some midway games and carny food stalls; I had a barbecued sausage wrapped in a slice of bread with tomato sauce, which is not at all the same as a hot dog but much more popular at New Zealand events of this type, and a paper bag of hot chips. I began to feel excessively full (especially with the after-effects of the fudge, which should not have been the first thing I ate) but happy. Having won a stick of beeswax lip balm on the Treasure Hunt in the long-jump sandpit, I wandered back to the books and magazines, where my later-arriving sister found me eating the last of my chips and reading a Bride To Be magazine. (I liked the idea of being given away by one's mother and father together. Hurrah for modern twists on tradition.) Kate had stayed the night with Rebecca way out in darkest Titirangi; in the morning she just drove home in her pyjamas to get washed and dressed to come along to the gala. We wandered round together and bought more Mystery Bottles and I showed her the Treasure Hunt (she won a lollipop and two sparkly hairclips) and we met up by chance with her nanny family - or at least, father John and the two older children, because Christopher the baby is away in England with his mother, visiting her mother who has cancer and is not long for this world. As a result Kate has been doing a lot of extra work this week and B. and James have come to our house for dinner a couple of nights. I had a little chat to John who is a nice man; we agreed that since New Zealand had bombed out of the World Cup we would simply have to switch to supporting England, which I could do since I am also a British citizen. (I did the reverse of this during the Eurovision Song Contest - when England sings that badly, I am purely a New Zealander. And I voted for Estonia in the phone-in.) But I don't believe there can be any English rugby players as beautiful as Doug Howlett. Go and see his website and give him your condolences. That was just a bad, bad game last night. I feel no need to dwell on it, though, and if anyone grizzles to me about it I just point out that our netball team are the world champions and the WOMEN's rugby team rocks.

I bought a Baby-Sitters Club paperback for 50 cents (#42, Jessi and the Dance School Phantom) and wandered and drank orange soda and urped and was happy. I also found a trinket on the craft stall that I think the Lizzard will like. Then I walked home, in an effort to mitigate the sausage and chips slightly, and ended up having a very good nap in the hammock under the deck, just out of the sun but quite warm, with Robin the cat on my chest. I don't know what it is about Sunday afternoon but I always seem to want a nap then. I don't feel the need to sleep during the day on Saturday or weekdays. When I was at university I sometimes seriously considered bringing my travel alarm clock so that I could have an afternoon nap without missing classes, but I never felt quite safe going to sleep in the common room on my own, in case someone should help themselves to something from my bag. I wonder if it will be like that again next year. Different university, of course, wherever I end up going. I'll have to find new sleeping spots and odd corners. At Auckland Uni I used to love the tutorial rooms lined with glass cases of stuffed animals in the pink Art Deco biology building, where, for no clear reason, two of my history lectures were scheduled. A couple of friends in that class and I (I fell out of touch with them after I quit history; story of my life) used to sneak in there and hang out in the hour between our shared French class and the history lecture. We gave all the animals names and made up stories about them. I recall that one of them, Mark, started me reading PJ O'Rourke. Thank you, Mark; goodness knows what became of you.

Well, the zoo was just excellent. It turned out we didn't even have to go and wrap bottles this morning because they were all finished on Friday. They had been playing the kids videos to keep them amused while the teachers set things up for the gala (there is no point trying to teach while you turn your classroom into a craft stall) and she brought home Stuart Little 2 (my mother has a THING for Stuart Little, manifested in frequent cries of 'Oh so CUUUUUUUUTE!') and one of my favourites, Lilo & Stitch. One bizarre thing about the video was that the layer of animation on which text appeared - like the 'I'm lost!' in the Ugly Duckling's speech bubble in Lilo's picture book, and the title on her 'Practical Voodoo' manual, and the text on the 'Volcano National Park' sign - was deleted in some cases, but not in others - book titles like 'Oyster Farming: Is It For You?' and the 'Flammable' signs on the petrol tanker Stitch hijacks were still visible. Don't know what that was about. Anyway, a nice Friday evening watching children's movies. I adore Lilo. She's so unwholesome. I mean, think about it, a child in a Disney movie who practises voodoo, pretends her doll has a head full of bugs and only a few days to live, and apparently brings home roadkill and cooks it on the stovetop? Well, all right, we don't know that it's roadkill in the saucepan from which Nani recoils, but Lilo's deadpan 'Found that this morning' is open to interpretation and something dead and squashy seems likely.

Speaking of dead and squashy, the number one thing that strikes me as bad writing in Lilo & Stitch is the dog-pound lady's claim that she thought Stitch was dead when he was brought in. But Stitch wakes up in an enclosure with other dogs. That simply wouldn't happen in any normally run animal shelter. A dead dog would be incinerated for reasons of hygiene. A seriously injured dog would be isolated from other animals - possibly cared for at the home of one of the shelter workers. So what gives? There's no comprehensible motive for the lady to lie about having thought Stitch was dead. It's just bad writing. Lilo's morbid interest in death ('Leave me alone to die,' with 'die' in perfect synch with Elvis singing the same word on the record player) makes sense since she is recently orphaned and clearly going through a phase in which she seeks magical means to control what goes on around her because she feels so powerless (voodoo to punish her 'friends,' offerings of peanut butter sandwiches to a fish that 'controls the weather' - remember that her parents' car accident happened because it was rainy)... but there's no reason for other characters, especially adults, to make gratuitous references to death.

Er, so, anyway, we didn't have to wrap bottles this morning. After the doctor business was concluded, we collected my grandmother and went to the zoo, via lunch at Tonino's in Mission Bay, where I had too much spaghetti carbonara. It's a very nice little place. Then we got to the zoo and simply wandered round enjoying ourselves. Highlights included seeing three keepers catching a very pissed off agouti for some sort of health check, and Kashin the elephant taking a bath. I was happy. (Although a little sleepy because of the carbonara.) A simple, good day.

So! Looking forward to tomorrow's gala. I shall have to go against the grain and get up early if I want to be in time to buy some fudge and coconut ice and pick over the good stuff in the white elephant hall.

No plans for tonight. My sister is going to watch the rugby in a pub with her friend Rebecca; I guess I'll see if there's anything decent on TV at home.

The Australian feed of Cartoon Network is severely annoying me by playing about the same eight episodes of Samurai Jack over and over again. I don't want to see him rescue the Scotsman's wife or travel through the dragon's belly again, I've seen those lots of times. Why can't they play some episodes I haven't been able to see yet, like the one where he's lost his memory, or has to learn to 'jump good'? I suppose it could be worse, they could just play 'Jack is Naked/Jack in Wonderland' every night. Worst... episode... ever. It wasn't the 'nakedity' I objected to, it was the dumbness of the plot (Jack was acting dumb too, as if he didn't understand what a burglar was) and the crashingly awful Mockney accents. Not to mention... what is the logic of Jack's skin looking an unwholesome boiled-baby pink when he is disguised in the actress' costume, but turning yellow again when it comes off? Because nonsense does have to employ logic. Read up on Lewis Carroll, as long as you're doing 'Wonderland' parodies. There doesn't seem to be a standard paint colour used for Jack's skin tone, either. He varies from a buttery yellow to a sort of dusty rose/biscuit shade, from episode to episode. I demand consistency from animated men on whom I have unhealthy and unrealistic crushes!

Ah, at last, a foul-mouthed manga-influenced Calvin & Hobbes for our times!

I have belatedly begun reading Sinfest, which means I got the fun of reading through a big archive. I almost wouldn't want to read a good online comic from day one, because that way you don't get the big hit of reading all the old ones in a marathon session or two, like a stay-up-all-night-talking date. IIRC, I found the strip through a link in Dylan-san's sig on the Nekomusume.net fora, so snaps for her. I think one of the strengths of Sinfest is also one of the strengths of the Discworld novels, albeit on a much smaller scale: it is not actually one series, but a cluster of series sharing a narrative world. Not all the characters know each other or ever interact. You never see Percival and Poochie in the same frame as anyone else. I don't think Li'l Evil ever has a direct conversation with God or the Dragon. This gives the author more story-telling freedom and the readers more variety. And incidentally, HOW CUTE IS LI'L EVIL? If I had a son about eight years old and he was prepared to suffer the indignity of being dressed by his mother for Hallowe'en, that'd be the costume right there. Oh, wait, I missed Hallowe'en and don't have kids yet.

My kids will have the dubious advantage in life that I will not be one of those mothers who doesn't see why having a cool, detailed Hallowe'en costume is important. No half-assed old-sheet-with-eye-holes-in-it costumes for MY kids. (Actually, whose mother has ever let them cut eye holes in a sheet that wasn't already irretrievably stained? 'Yeah, I'm a pop art ghost. Those paint splatters are on purpose and nothing to do with the colour Mum did the living room in this winter.' 'Ummm... I'm a bloodstained ghost. From MURDER. Not menstruation.')

So I just hope they enjoy being dressed up as anime and cartoon characters. 'Mu-UM! I'm going to be the only Powerpuff Girl THERE! You suck!'

I did the 'which religion matches your beliefs?' quiz at SelectSmart.com and it said I oughtta be a Neo-Pagan. My sister would amend this to Neil-Pagan.

Nothing very interesting has been happening. The other night I thought of something that makes people giggle: Imagine Sean Connery pronouncing the words 'feng shui.'

This weekend coming up is a little exciting. Sunday is my mother's school gala. (I should explain, for foreigners, that in New Zealand a school fundraising fair/festival is always called the Gala. I don't know why. We don't call anything much else a gala. And it's pronounced gah-lah, not gay-lah as I've heard Americans say it. Equal stress on both syllables, or perhaps a little more on the first, so it is not the same as the Australian galah, a pretty pink and grey parrot noted for excitable stupidity.) I always love a school gala; done right, they're great fun and very nostalgic, since they have not changed in essence since my childhood. On Saturday morning she'll need me to help her wrap the bottles for the Mystery Bottles stall, which she runs every year. All the bottles are wrapped in white butcher paper and labelled with a number. On the stall, the bottles are turned so the customers can't see the numbers, and you choose a number from a blackboard or whiteboard (they are erased or crossed off when someone chooses them), pay two dollars and get your mystery bottle. It might be Coke, it might be soy sauce. You'll find out when you unwrap it. There's an all ages section and an adults' (meaning alcohol) section. There are always a few bottles of something really special, like champagne or real perfume, scattered through the mix, donated by local businesses. The rest are donated by the families of the school. The Mystery Bottles stall is one of the most popular, and still uses a large cardboard sign (showing a bottle with the name of the stall written on its label) that I made when I was in intermediate school or something. There will be home-made sweets and a cowpat raffle and a white elephant sale and all the carny food you can shake a stick at. *happy*

Anyway, once the bottles are wrapped, if the weather is fine we're going to the zoo in the afternoon. I haven't been to Auckland Zoo for more than a year and I miss it. And then, of course, on Sunday there's the gala itself. So hurrah!

I'll be sure and let you know what was in my mystery bottle.

I saw The Matrix Revolutions last night.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

To repeat what I said about it in the Nekomusume.net forums (not that I think what I said there was blindingly clever, but I can't be bothered thinking of something entirely new to say), at least they left the mystical spoon out of it.

It just pisses me off that they dropped so many of the balls put in the air by the first movie. It's already been pointed out that the two sequel movies in no way play out what is suggested by Neo's phone call to the machines at the end of 'Matrix.'

When Sati is found staying with the Oracle, I find myself thinking, a, how does that work, you make a deal with the Merovingian to get your kid into the Matrix, she's taken there by the Trainman and he gives her to the Oracle? The Oracle and the Merovingian don't exactly like each other. But then later it appears that Sati wasn't staying with the Oracle, just visiting, and Seraph (I slightly fancy Seraph) is supposed to see her home - where to? Some kind of safe house for little programs who have been smuggled in? The house of an ordinary Indian family into whose lives she has been surreptitiously inserted, and they don't remember she wasn't born to them? How can a program be Indian any more, anyway? Her dad talks with an accent. Aren't they from Zero One? Speaking of families, given the way babies are bred for the Matrix in the fields, are human families living in it actually biologically related to each other? Pregnancy and birth within the Matrix are illusions. Logically, people might not look like their Matrix image of themselves when they come out of it, and I don't mean just not having hair or eyebrows - if the machines have tackled a massive human breeding project rationally, everyone ought to be milky-coffee-coloured with slightly slanted eyes and wavy hair by now.

And b, what happened to all the little 'potentials' who were hanging at the Oracle's when Neo visits in the first movie? Did they just pop those in a shredder when he turned out to be able to stop bullets? Were they born in Zion or taken out of the Matrix like he was? Were they involved in the war effort at all? Spoon-bender kid might have been useful.

And why did Neo never do what he said he would, show people (presumably he meant the majority population still plugged in) the world without machine control?

Perhaps because everyone would have said, 'you want us to get into a war to regain control of a planet that can't support life any more? Oh yah. GREAT idea. Waitress! I'd like my bill and my blue pill.'

When the Architect says the people remaining in the Matrix will be freed - hey, I thought they were all turned into Agent Smith, can humans survive that? We were only shown that Sati and Seraph did, but they're programs - does he mean they'll just be biffed out of their pods to fend for themselves, with no hair, no clothes, atrophied muscles, soaking wet, not knowing what's happened? Are they all supposed to go and live in Zion, which is trashed and difficult of access?

Why did the machines ever bother to burrow to Zion in the first place? As James Lileks pointed out, they could just have blocked its air ducts or piped in gas or water. It would have been efficient and even, if they'd used the right kind of gas, humane.

You know what would have been way cooler, when Smith finally Smith-ifies Neo? If when the ex-Neo Smith took off his sunglasses, he still had Neo's eyes. Given the recurring obsession with eyes in that movie it would also have been thematically satisfying.

And speaking of eyes, I think it's a sign of how unengaging a character Neo is that his blinding merely led me to sit there thinking up Frank Zappa parodies.

'And the One stood there
With his arms outstretched
Wondering what he's going to do about his deflicted eyes
When he remembered an ancient Zionist legend
Wherein *it is written*
(On whatever it is they write it on down there)
That if anything bad ever happens to your eyes as a result of some sort of conflict with anyone named Bane
The only way to get it fixed up
Is to go trudging across the tundra, mile after mile,
Trudging across the tundra, right down to the little parish of Saint Deus Ex Machina.'

I also thought of,

But there my invention ran out. Much like the Wachowskis'.

Today was a do-errands-for-the-family day; I had to go and get pool chemicals, which involved a tricky bit of driving on an unfamiliar stretch of highway. I muffed it slightly - missing my lane - but luckily there was no-one coming up close behind so I didn't inconvenience anyone or cause a hideous accident in the process of sorting myself out.

Another odd thing about Revolutions is that, when Morpheus, Trinity and the incidentally rather toothsome Seraph go to the Merovingian's unisex slut club, we see the first ever incident of one of the 'heroes' deliberately avoiding injuring a civilian. Either Morpheus or Seraph, I didn't see distinctly which, pushes the green-haired coat-check girl into the elevator so that she is not involved in the shootout with the weapons-check lads. Compare that with the freeway sequence in Reloaded, with who knows how much human collateral damage. What's up with that? Suddenly they give a damn?

The justification of wholesale slaughter of plugged-in civilians in The Matrix was that at any moment, any of them could become the avatar of an Agent, and then you would have to kill them or be killed. This was used in a way that actually made sense in Shinichiro Watanabe's Animatrix short 'Detective Story,' in which Trinity has to shoot the private eye who has tracked her and begun to understand what she represents, because he begins to change as they talk on the train. There, she expresses regret at the waste of a life and the unfairness to the detective, saying 'For what it's worth, I think you could have handled the truth.' A potential ally (and a guy classy enough to name his cat Dinah) has been lost.

Hey, question. There can't possibly be any animals left on the Matrix Earth. They couldn't survive the devastation of the sky and the machines wouldn't have tried to preserve them. So are all the animals in the Matrix programs? And how do the pet programs feel about the humans they live with? What sort of intelligence does Dinah have, or Yuki from the related short 'Beyond'?