Whining

The bad thing about having a proposal accepted into a conference is that you're then a slave to that proposal, even if it turns out you detest the topic and see it as an meaningless rhetorical exercise.

Oh well. I've got at least 4 pages of crap. Must... keep... going...

On a much happier (and I guess rather random) note, it looks like I'll be going to China in a week or so. I spent last summer earning the money and I've found a cheap consolidater flight out of Vancouver. Providing the plane dosn't fall out of the sky (-remember me as a hero!-) I'll be landing in Shanghai and spending two weeks on the mainland, flying out of Beijing. I trace my unfortunate obsession with the Great Wall back to Civ 2 and my interest in China to Gong Li films and books like Wild Swans, which is awesome and which you need to read if you haven't yet.

( Today's random meme: )

Movies the grad student in me wants to see...

"Everytime I hear a story about Ewan McGregor, he always seems to be playing with himself, but this story takes it to new extremes. The Scottish "Star Wars" actor has committed to his next four movie roles, all in a single film - an untitled British comedy written and to be directed by fellow Scot Peter Capaldi reports RTE Interactive.

In the period film within a period film, Ewan McGregor will play a 1930s Hollywood star, his stand-in and both of the 18th-century characters they play in the movie they're shooting.

Capaldi's multi-layered script deals with an epic pic being shot in the 1930s about the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, in which Scottish forces loyal to Bonnie Prince Charlie tried to overthrow their English rulers. When the star goes missing, the producers trick an unassuming extra into filling his shoes, with surprising results." -- from Dark Horizons

They had me at "Ewan McGregor." The postmodern Jacobite stuff / Ealing-studio multiple roles is just the icing on the cake. :)