National Poetry Month

Poem 5 by Catullus. I've got two translations, because they're fairly different and I liked them both.

Translation by A.Z. Foreman
It's time to live and let love, Lesbia,
Knowing the rumors of the scandalized
Gray-headed men worth less than any penny!
The sun gone down can rise again to day:
but when our short and final light is done
we will go down into a dawnless slumber.
So give a thousand kisses up to me.
A hundred and a thousand and a hundred.
Don't you dare stop. Another thousand. Hundreds.
Then scramble them all with me into a hot mess
Beyond our power to sort, and so protect us
From evil eyes that jealous jerks would give us
If ever they got all our kisses straight.


Translation by Thomas Campion
Let us live, my Lesbia, and love.
As for all the rumors of those stern old men,
Let us value them at a mere penny.
Suns may set and yet rise again, but
Us, with our brief light, can set but once.
One never-ending night must be slept.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred.
Then, another thousand, and a second hundred.
Then, yet another thousand, and a hundred.
Then, when we have counted up many thousands,
Let us shake the abacus, so that no one may know the number,
And become jealous when they see
How many kisses we have shared.

Watching Monday

Game of Thrones

I really liked this episode!

Man, Ramsay with the dogs already? I feel like the show is going to catch up with the books incredibly fast. Or else the Ramsay and Bran storylines are just going to outpace everyone else.

Fat Walda! Yay!

I thought the Theon/Ramsay shaving scene was an excellent way of showing how broken Theon is without being able to use his internal monologue. Also just a great, tense scene.

I kind of don't care about anything happening with Melisandre and Stannis, just get back to the wedding, y'all.

Oh, I don't know how I feel about this Tyrion/Shaw scene. On the one hand, it's really obvious he's only saying these things to drive her away, and if we're going to have him regretting things later, I would like it to be things he himself said rather than things his father said. On the other hand, I wish Shae had done something other than stand there and cry. It doesn't seem like the character she's been set up as. At least she slapped Bronn, I guess? (Shae is totally not on that ship when it leaves, by the way. My guess is Tywin already has her.)

I really liked the Cersei/Tywin/Oberyn/Ellaria scene. Oberyn's actor is growing on me, and I loved the line about "Some places frown on those of low birth, others consider the rape and murder of women and children distasteful". Cersei calling him "tolerant" as an insult was too perfect.

I liked the change in the wedding entertainment– it managed to insult not just Tyrion, but basically every single person there. All the reaction shots were wonderful.

And then Joffrey dies! Goodbye, Jack Gleeson, you were awesome.



Oculus
Sigh, I always have such high hopes for horror movies and they almost always disappoint me. That said, I did like this one better than any other that's come out in the last few years: it actually managed to use suspense and terrible situations rather than gore and jump scares. I also liked that there was never an explanation given for why exactly the mirror was evil (and let's just go along with the "evil mirror" situation) because that's definitely a set-up that's just going to get silly instead of scary if you spend too much time trying to explain it. It could have been a bit scarier– there was a few scenes where the director dragged out a super-long take to build tension, and it just wasn't happening– and the ending wasn't as good as it could be, but overall a very nice horror movie.