(no subject)

It's hot. Summer seems to finally have arrived, with a vengeance...

*Fans self*

Don't think I'll stir out today... make iced coffee, greek salad & be lazy, read, watch tv...

Tired, too. Slept until 11 after coming home late from the summer open air theatre thing yesterday.

Hamlet, here... ; semi-good. Severely cut (Fortinbras? who?), to make it fit into two and a half hours, for the comfort & convenience of the Viennese part of the audience presumably, giving the play an extremely rushed feeling, strictly focusing on plot & action, rather than character development & such - which, with a play like Hamlet, obviously can be something of a disadvantage. Too loud, what with the level of shouting & screaming; I don't think microphones were really necessary in such a small auditorium.

A very young Hamlet, who never seemed much more than a disgruntled teenager, by turns ranting, raving and sulking, quite believable in the action driven scenes, but never really conveying the character's introspective side, his dilemma, or development throughout the play (IMO the in the graveyard scene there ought to be a moment where the realisation of his own mortality truly strikes home, you can't play the whole scene for laughs); resorting to shouting much too often, to the point where Hamlet's advice to the actors was bordering on the ironic. A very harsh, grumpy Gertrude, who constantly gave the impression she'd much rather be anywhere else, quite happy to drink the poison cup in the end. Claudius wasn't bad, and truly touching in the prayer-scene; he at least was believable in his motivations and his love for his wife. Ophelia not bad either, cutting of strands of her hair with a razor and handing them out for flowers. Polonius something of a wannabe Iago-esque evil master mind with decidedly psychotic traits, the actor apparently hell-bent on making the most of every scene, if his character wasn't to survive until the end.

It had a couple of good, even touching moments, though, and the production and everyone in it would vastly have profited from, say, another half hour.

.:.:.:.

I've been thinking recently... I cannot be altogether sure if this isn't just another case of sour grapes, but every life is also the sum of negative choices, the roads not taken. There always will be plenty of things one can't have and won't have - or won't be - for a variety of reasons, and it seems more productive to focus on who and what one is, instead of constantly regretting the absence of other things, which seems more and more like a waste of time and energy.

After all, it is up to me what value I attach to various aspects of my life.

(Banal? Maybe...)

.:.:.:.

A propos the latest local church sex scandal... On the one hand given official the stance of the catholic church on homosexuality, especially repeatedly & loudly voiced as it was by bishop Krenn, a certain amount of schadenfreude, the impulse to mock and call them on their own hypocrisy is understandable, on the other hand the gleeful tone prevalent in many of the commentaries makes me feel uncomfortable. Possession of child-porn obviously is illegal & a punishable offence, but relationships between consenting adults, while a problem for the church and its doctrine of celibacy, is really no concern of mine, and especially self-proclaimed liberal media should take greater care to distinguish here...

This said, what I despise most about the politics of the catholic church is not even so much its double standards of not practicing what it preaches, but the apparent willingness to quietly tolerate a lot of things, but god forbid someone has courage enough to talk about it, thereby encouraging secrecy, lies, and presumably all kinds of personal conflicts. I'm aware this attitude is prevalent not only within the church, but I would expect a religious institution not to actively encourage dishonesty and spinelessness in its members.

.:.:.:.

Gotta love the HP fandom. Someone points out the racism in the Potter-verse and the lack of consideration many fans give to it, in explicit, if not entirely diplomatic terms, and promptly gets bitched at for being racist herself & 'gratuitously using 'racial slurs'' - to get her point across, one might add.

After which everyone can feel self-righteous & go back to complacently writing poor!misunderstood!Draco fluff.

Right.