Hurrah for HTML!

As you may have noticed the quote and colour of said quote in my header have changed. The sizes have changed too, though that isn't really all that amazing. What is amazing is that I did it all myself with funky little HTML bits. I'm quite chuffed with myself.

Last night I watched Oldboy, a quite excellent Korean movie which is typical of Asian cinema in that it is bloody odd. It's about this guy who gets locked up in some prison for 15 years for no apparent reason. He then gets released and has five days to figure out what the hell's going on. Tension builds, breasts are bared, hands are cut off and the film ends on a strangely disturbing note. Great stuff altogether.

Also watched Dead or Alive, a film directed by Takashi Miike, who was also behind Gozu, mentioned below. While it's much less weird than Gozu, it is an odd film full of unpleasentness and seemingly pointless bits. The director says in an interview in the special features that he deliberately made the film make no sense because he wanted to fuck with the producers who were only in it for the money. He showed them! I won't ruin it for anyone who may want to see it, because it is worth seeing - particularly the first five minutes, but I really want to...

And the other day I watched Zatoichi, a film by Takeshi Kitano. The trailer shows it as a fast paced sword-fightin' movie but it actually isn't. Very slow, very arty and very odd. Much as I predicted and told certain people who wouldn't believe me. You know who you are, Sarah.

I am definitely learning Japanese! It's such a cool language and I'll only get so far in Tokyo with arigato and domu and any other words I've picked up along the way...

Aside from that, I spent the day trying to learn When You Awake, by The Band. I have a DVD here that shows Rick Danko (deceased) playing it (obviously not while deceased) but I still can't seem to work out what the chords are. There are a lot of them, to be sure, to be sure...

I'm still torn on the cat issue. While putting bleach on the windowsill might stop them jumping on it, I feel something more caustic and less obvious might be a better deterrent. Although the ISPCA might have something to say about that:

- I'm having you arrested for deliberately burning the feet off cats!
- No, you don't understand, I always put sulphuric acid on my windowsills.
- Rubbish!
- No, seriously... You'll think I'm mad, but, well, I hear it keeps vampires away...
- Surely that's garlic...
- PAH! Folklore and nonsense.
- No, 'cos I read in this book once that... Hold on, why am I discussing vampires with you? You're a nutter!
- Ah, who's the bigger nutter? The nutter or the nutter that talks to him?
- ... *poof* ... (disappears in a puff of logic)

Hmmm... I don't forsee it being a productive conversation. Maybe I'll just tolerate the cats.