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I believe the word you are looking for is “FINALLY”

Gary Oldman received his first Oscar nomination ever last week for his role in the quite good Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I’m not going to lie, I was kind of surprised; he’d received a lot of buzz very early on in Oscar season but I hadn’t heard much lately and assumed the film was Too British to really make much of an impact on the Academy. I am delighted to be wrong!

But let’s be serious. As I said last year when my Michael Fassbender obsession exploded, as a Gary Oldman fan, I am not unfamiliar with the pain and tragedy of working through an actor’s back catalogue on a quest to see everything they’ve ever done, only to encounter performances in middling to horrendous projects too upsetting to comprehend. This nomination is reward for our suffering. We all know what he’s awesome in (tip: everything), so instead I bring you the Top Five Most Horrible Gary Oldman Films Ever.

Believe me, it was challenging to restrict this list to only five. (Beware spoilers and also maybe some scary imagery.) Continue reading →

domestic goddess alert

Recipe sharing time! Cooking is generally not really my thing and so on the rare occasion I find a recipe I actually like, I feel compelled to share it. I’ve been attempting a lot of Indian or otherwise curry-based dishes in the last few months because it forces me to eat lots of veggies and because rice is so easy to make.

Anyway. Onward to the Easy, Tasty Chickpea Curry (via The Kitchn). Note that as I am a lazy and forgetful chef, I make a lot of substitutions and leave things out entirely, so I’m reproducing an annotated version of the recipe here.

Continue reading →

in other news, I have a nauseating migraine that will not die

Guess who had her first knitting class tonight?

These are the fruits of my labours thus far. Those of you who are experienced knitters are probably deeply ashamed of my horrific attempts at casting on; the photo does not do justice to the random holes that appear in the first few rows, but I got the hang of it eventually.

Can we talk about how fun it is to pick out wool? I had to fight the urge to pick something too out there as if I make something that ends up being wearable from a are-these-competent-stitches point of view, I would also like it to not be a deeply terrifying fashion statement. I played it safe and went with what Amelia calls “fashion grey”, i.e. a darker shade of grey (hexadecimal colour #555555!) that you can wear and still look fashionable, which is often defined in opposition to “Dad grey” which is a much lighter shade of grey (#CCCCCC!) and rarely looks chic. Not to say you can’t find a way to make Dad Grey work, I’m just saying it might take a special talent and a keen eye for design.

Ca va bien, et vous?


A former coworker dropped by work today having returned recently from a two month trip to Europe. She mentioned that she had not at all enjoyed Paris and I expressed surprise as I remember really liking it as I apparently didn’t have any negative experiences the way she had. We talked more about her trip and then as if to refute my own previously stated enjoyment of the city, I kept remembering weirdly negative things that happened while I was there:

  1. On our very first day, we were getting on the Metro and a gang of Parisian louts (what’s the French equivalent of lout?) jumped the turnstiles and then proceeded to flash us.
  2. After walking up the magical Champs-Élysées at night, we arrived at the Arc de Triomphe only to find a dude taking a crap on it. Like, literally: he was squatting against the facade, pooping.
  3. Some of the girls in our group had gone to a nightclub (pro-tip: don’t go to Parisian night clubs) and when they left, a group of guys followed their taxi back to the hotel and then stood outside watching the windows and waiting for lights to turn on so they could then go inside and figure out which rooms the girls were in.

There is also something called Paris Syndrome which has symptoms that include “acute delusions, hallucinations, dizziness, sweating, and feelings of persecution” and which “is thought to be linked to extreme disappointment that Paris is not always the magical, romantic wonderland it’s so often made out to be in the movies”.

Voila, Paris! I still like it, although I am trying to separate “Paris is AWESOME!” from “I am eighteen and this is the first time I’ve been to Europe, whee!” I suppose I would have to go back as a proper adult to make a true assessment of the city, which is not the worst thing in the world to do.