#97: Head unit

I am now the proud owner of a beautiful new head unit for my car.

Mum and Dad's Christmas present to me was something for my car — Mum later admitted that that was partly to encourage me to actually buy a car, since I'd been planning to for months and still hadn't decided on one. But I bought my lovely car in February, and decided to get a head unit. When my birthday rolled around in May and I still hadn't bought it, though, Mum and Dad decided their birthday present to me was a bigger budget for my head unit.

Side note on my car: I really love it. It's a big five-door family-sized car with a massive boot, and for a first car it's great. Relatively new, electric windows, already armed with an alarm, manual gearbox, a bigger engine than I'm used to, and in really good condition — although, really sadly, it's already been nicked and dinged in a couple of places by careless drivers and (in one instance) by my own careless/overtired driving. :-(

It also came with a Kenwood tape deck but, much as I like Kenwood, a tape deck is frankly useless. Dan and I went shopping for CD head units a couple weeks ago, and finally found a good branded one with more than all the specifications that I wanted, and at exactly my price range — to the dollar. Of course Dan, being Dan, said we could get it cheaper somewhere else, now that I knew what I was looking for. I sighed impatiently, but he was right — after some ferreting around on the internet (ha, ha), Dan found the next model up from the one I wanted, for $20 less. Surprisingly, it was on Ferrit — my opinion of that place is slowly rising, and my opinion of their current free delivery policy is very high indeed.

We placed the order on Saturday night. Since the payment couldn't go through till Monday at the absolute earliest, I was very impressed to receive my beautiful new head unit promptly on Tuesday morning; and Dan installed it for me last night. Ah, it's lovely. I love it so much. And it's so pretty. And it has so many functions — though at least I didn't let Dan talk me into getting the head unit with a two-inch screen to play my videos on!

So I'm very happy. And now, because my new head unit plays ATRAC and AAC tracks (neither of which I've heard of before, but apparently they're smaller and better than mp3s?), I am off to convert my mp3s to ATRAC format.

Life is good.

#9: Script Frenzy

I really hated Script Frenzy. Don't anyone, for the sake of your own health and sanity, ever attempt it.

I hadn't actually planned to do it, until I realised that none of the four NZ NaNoWriMo coordinators were stepping up either; so it was me or no one. So I did it — talked to people, wrote an article for Chaff: no response.

I hated the silent community. I hated the fact I was the only one posting most of the time, and I hate the fact that I basically just gave up on my community, because of that silence. I don't like giving up, and I hate that my community was so very unhelpful and uncommunicative.

I hate scriptwriting. Even at my lowest point of NaNoWriMo, which I've done and won four times, I've always been happy I'm doing it and enjoyed the writing. Scriptwriting, I hated from start to end, and the only reason I finished was because I'm the ML, I almost have a responsibility to finish.

I hate my shirt. I read the sizing, measured myself, ordered a medium and, I'm sorry, that's not medium. I am drowning in this shirt.

With Script Frenzy, I was so unmotivated that on the morning of June 30th I was only up to 5067 words (which I can do in a day). But:
1. I was the regional coordinator.
2. Completing Script Frenzy was a 101 goal, so if I didn't do it this year, I'd have to put myself through it again another year. It was the thought of having to do it again that drove me to write 15000 words on 30th June.

I guess I kind of did it to see if I could. And I could. I won't be doing it again. I do think novel-writing is more enjoyable — I'm a reader, and readers are more likely to be drawn to writing novels than movies or stageshows. To be fair, in 2003 I did NNWM just to see if I could do it. But, in doing it, I loved it, and actually had something not too awful to show for it. So I've done it again every year since.

I love NaNoWriMo. I may well coordinate it again this year. I've coordinated NaNoWriMo in 2005 and 2006, and enjoyed both times. The NaNoWriMo community is awesome and fun and enthusiastic and creative, and I've never had a single problem participant (knock on wood).

At least it's over. And I never have to write a script again!

Becoming Jane

Pride and Prejudice is a great (if rather girly) book, and deservedly a classic; and Austen's books were unquestionably trendsetters. So when I found out there was a movie on Austen's life, I was quite excited.

Becoming Jane was a huge disappointment.

Here are the facts: Jane Austen had five brothers and a sister, Cassandra, whose fiancé died of yellow fever. At 21, Austen had a brief flirtation with Tom LeFroy. Six years later, a Mr Bigg-Wither proposed to her; she accepted him, only to change her mind and retract her acceptance the next day. In the end, she never married.

Becoming Jane is a romance. Surely, its makers say, Jane Austen must have had some spectacular romance, to write so well? And so they've set out to create a romance based on Jane's brief flirtation with Tom LeFroy.

Austen was an advocate of sense and propriety. She extolled love in marriage; but as books like Persuasion show, any woman who marries without security is a fool, and the world not well lost. But I doubt Becoming Jane's makers had read any Austen other than Pride and Prejudice.

What is shown in Becoming Jane is as follows: Cassandra's fiancé dies of yellow fever (true). Jane Austen has a passionate love affair with Tom LeFroy at the same time as she's being pursued by Mr Bigg-Wither (whose name is changed to Mr Wisley); Austen and LeFroy elope to Gretna Green; Austen changes her mind halfway through and returns home; and Bigg-Wither/Wisley kindly dumps her (untrue).

The overt sexuality in the movie is completely out of period. One scene in the library is almost laughably impossible — Austen would never have stood for such lewd talking, and LeFroy would not have attempted it. This is a modern movie putting a modern character in Georgian England; not a depiction of Jane Austen, a Georgian woman, as she really was.

The movie trailer says it wants to show Jane as a woman in love with life and all its possibilities. Instead, it diminishes the facts of Austen's life, magnifying her flirtation with LeFroy out of any reasonable proportion and bearing little comparison to Austen's real character.

It's a shame that, instead of a biography, Becoming Jane is a trite, unrealistic romance. The film-makers looked at her life, and found it dull. They've fabricated a much more Hollywood story, and told that one instead. But if you're not going to stick to the bare facts, don't pose as biographical. Jane Austen deserved a better tribute than this.