What's with today, today?

Over the weekend I headed down to Canberra (for a whole night!) and while there I picked up a book that was lying around the house called 'Heart Songs' by Annie Proulx. It's a book of short stories about the farmers and country dwellers in a remote part of New England, America, in the (fictional?) Chopping County. The characters are all either very poor or rich, city dwelling intruders. It had alot of elements that resonated with my American Gothic class, all dark secrets and run-down houses and a pervasive past. It also made me think of country music. This was not particularly original thinking on my part, the eponymous story ('Heart Songs') was about a family of these country people ('hicks' if you will, or maybe hillbillies?) who played country music together and are infiltrated by a city dweller who is impressed by their music. All the music is very sad. And I suppose the point of the stories is that they are like country songs themselves, sad and dark b...

I saw 'Hot Fuzz' on Saturday night. I had heard good things, so I was expecting it to be enjoyable, but I was wrong. It wasn't merely enjoyable, it was really really great! Now that I've spoilt that un-hyped experience for you all (all of you that are still reading my blog) I guess I should elaborate a bit. It was hilarious, all of us laughed alot. It just got more and more surreal and over the top. But also very violent in surprisingly gruesome ways. It's about a highly talented, highly urban cop who gets transferred to a small country village (village of the year in fact) and is initially rather bored and out of place, until sinister things start happening. At which point he is still out of place, as the idea of 'sinister' seems to be completely alien to the village dwellers minds. Oh, and it's by the makers of 'Shaun of the Dead', which was also pretty good. Basically my main point is that you should all go out and watch this movie, because yo...