Tom Cruise, tedious technical difficulties, and a caffeine buzz

[quislibet]

J. and I watched "Legend" last night on AMC, which neither of us had in fact ever seen. It's astonishing how the movie was both agonizingly slow and yet so hard to follow.

I wonder if Tim Curry got a neckache from those horns.

--
Today I am working from home, or will be once I stop reading websites and sending e-mail, having brought home with me yesterday evening an editing project that makes me sad. A frequent contributor to the journal I work for sends long articles full of Greek and Arabic quotations and astrological and mathematical symbols, but in a format (TEX) utterly incompatible with any sort of software we have, and every sort of converter I have downloaded or even bought has resulted in nothing better than I get from converting to plain text (even converting via PDF comes to naught, nor is, for some reason, the PDF editable in Acrobat). The upshot is that I have a 40-page manuscript to edit full of line breaks, including extra ones generated wherever there is a strange symbol. Wheeee.

This is the third such article from this man I have edited, and I am weary of it -- weary, I say. In the past I have tried many things, and asked for help from a variety of sources, including many of you via lists and so forth, so I am not expecting further advice here, really. Anything you can think of will probably either have already failed, or else be beyond my ability to comprehend or, for reasons of software or hardware at my disposal, to implement.

The author is himself technically non-adept, and so his typing is done by an assistant who cannot bring herself to use a format we can deal with. Alas, however, the boss really likes this guy's scholarship, and if we were to demand a different electronic format we would probably just not get anything more from him. That would be a.o.k. with ME, but it's not my decision.

It is, however, my problem.

I just sighed heavily, but you couldn't hear it.

--
Is it possible to be more sensitive to caffeine while suffering from a cold? For the last couple of days, not long after drinking coffee, I have had a sort of strange buzz feeling akin to those few times I have taken No-Doz. It's not that there's additional caffeine in the cold meds.

Weird.

I had bizarre dreams last night, but all I can remember from them is the line, "I like animal fat as much as the next guy. Well, okay, not if you include *him*."

Comments

Really?

[thefreak.livejournal.com]

...having gotten past the initial shock of not having seen Legend before (what, you had something better to do in 1986?), I could see your points on the slow thing...but how was it hard to follow exactly? I rather liked the fact that they didn't over-explain things...that they acted just as I would have expected them to act naturally...if you can say dwarves, sprites, and demons act naturally.

Easily Tim CUrry's best role...the fact that the costume mad ehis lips and eyes seem normal-sized was especially humorous...

Re: Really?

[quislibet.livejournal.com]

how was it hard to follow exactly?

Wait, who is this character? Is this someone we've seen before? How did Mia Sara's touching the unicorn hurt things, since the goblins were going to shoot it anyway? Who was that guy that came to get the horn from the goblins, since it didn't sound like Tim Curry? Some other Big Bad? Is that the one Curry was talking to about lusting after Mia Sara? Why doesn't this other bad guy intervene in any useful way? Wait, it's a secret that the little glowy thing is also a freaky chick? Am I supposed to be surprised by this revelation? Wait, the imprisoned goblin is really an elf or something? Oh, look, they're fighting something that wasn't there when I glanced at the clock a second ago. Huh. Oh, look, another slow-motion atmospheric bit. Why did that loud noise that's no louder than any of the other loud noises they've been making finally wake up those guard ogre things? Why did that annoying dwarf thing just fall over? Oh, that door just closed, it seems it was a big deal, I guess that will mess up their sunlight plan, and that one guy who was disguised as a goblin got trapped. Oh, I guess that dwarf is narcoleptic. Oh, look, that closing door seems not to have mattered, 'cause the sunlight thingy is working. Why does Tim Curry keep a cosmic void in his castle? Wouldn't you worry about falling into it by accident when you get up at night to go to the bathroom?

Added to that the fact that nearly everyone had a silly accent or a weird voice effect, so it was hard to understand what anyone said.

Re: Really?

[atalanta.livejournal.com]

No matter how wide awake you are when you see Legend, it feels like you're half-asleep at 4 am.

Re: Really?

[quislibet.livejournal.com]

Well said.