Things that make me go *stab stab stab*

So, this new version of Pride and Prejudice. I don't expect it's going to touch the miniseries, but I have been hoping for a bit of love out of it. Matthew MacFadyen is such an earnest boo, as Beth would put it, and I've liked what I've seen of Keira Knightley, and I can totally see Donald Sutherland as Mr Bennet.

They've switched the year to 1797, because the director doesn't like Empire gowns. ...Well, okay, I don't either (has there ever been a garment more calculated to display any possible figure to poor advantage?), and unlike Persuasion it's not so directly tied to specific exterior events, so I guess that's not too terrible.

They've fahddled with the dialogue, made it more "accessible". Um. I don't know. I found it pretty "accessible" when I read it at age 15. I seriously hope this doesn't equate to "dumbed-down"; but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

But now, spies report that the US release is going to be eight minutes longer. For more exposition? Deeper character development, perhaps?

No. For gratuitous lip-mashing. For breathy exclamations and sappy gropings. Because "American audiences like a sweeter ending." Because that's SO GODDAMN APPROPRIATE for the era.

Jane Austen is not thematically equivalent to Harlequin romances, you stupid twats.

for the Taltos fans: I kept wanting to type the actress' name as "Kiera". Sigh.

get off my lawn, part 1e38

I want better iconnage. However, my l33t graphics sk1llz are limited to Zog Crop Picture, Zog Resize Picture, and MY TEXT IZ PASTEDE ON YAY!. I've tried several times to embark on a glorious learning spree of layers and filters and shadows and animated GIFs and lord knows what, but I'm drinking from a fire hose and after about ten minutes my eyes have glazed over and I slink off to do something easy, like, I don't know, custom sendmail rules.

There are tutorials. Oh my yes, are there ever tutorials. There are so many tutorials, my eyes glaze over just trying to parse the enormous list of them. I don't need much, just some basic functionality of "here is how we make text look like it's part of the picture", "here is how to make a basic animated icon". Where, O where shall I find my grail-shaped beacon?

My stomach is upset, but I'm fairly sure that's unrelated.

And now, a final irritant

Trying to help some poor idiot of a customer who, all unknowingly, managed to switch his DNS to Network Solutions when all he was trying to do was set up a website with them, thereby fux0ring his entire situation. This has been an all-day comedy of errors for him and his soi-disant "tech guy", because they don't even get the basic building blocks necessary in order to Get It. Which is not their fault, but they haven't proved able to go make the very simple fix required ("call NetSol and tell them to make your DNS servers "foo" and "bar""), and in fact managed to fuck things up even worse as NetSol persuaded them to agree to just changing their MX record...to something wildly incorrect. So finally we agreed to have a nice little conference chat: them, me, and NetSol.

Wherein it was learned that your Friendly Neighborhood NetSol Technical Assistance People don't understand the concept of serial numbers. Or why they're important. Or how A records work. Or, well, anything DNS-related, really.

This leads to another entertaining round of "why the fuck does the rest of the world get paid 3x what I do to leave messes that I have to clean up?" In the Cosmic Parade of Life, apparently I am the git walking behind the elephants with a big ole broom and dustpan. I fail to appreciate this.

Eit.

Moody in that foul, blacker-than-black sort of way. I am seized by an overwhelming desire to drink really vicious cheap tequila and smash things while listening to Irish punk turned up to 11.

Fortunately for world + me (but possibly not him), it's my night with Brian, so none of this is likely to actually occur.

I really need my old Anthrax icon back.